I am freaked out. A stranger on a Facebook thread posted a picture of a private Facebook messenger exchange I had with a third party. I have been at home for the last few months and no one has access to my Android phone, my computer or any of my accounts. I am always very careful with passwords. I am not friends with this “hacker” and the post of my private exchange was used to bully and harass me. I am at wit’s end, for I feel I can never use internet apps again. I understand technology and have been on the Internet since the beginning. I cannot figure out how someone can get into Facebook messenger without physical access to my phone, computer or passwords. I am also very frightened and feel violated because this guy is nuts. He is not very smart though, so I am baffled how he was able to do this. Please help!
(At first I thought it might have been the recipient of the messages who released them, because it was a local official’s account, but then I realized the placement of the messages and replies in the screenshot indicate it was seen from my account, not the person I sent it to, i.e. the screenshot the “hacker” posted showed my messages in blue, the other person’s in grey).
You can see what devices you’re logged in from here: Redirecting...
Check to make sure there’s no devices in there you don’t recognize. If so, the hacker found some way to guess your password. You might try checking Have I been Pwned to see if your password was breached in any 3rd party hacks as this is quite a popular way for hackers to compromise accounts.
Alternatively, it’s quite possible that the other person in the exchange gave the messages over to the hacker. It’s quite trivial to alter screenshots to make them look like it came from your account even though it came from theirs.
In some states, such as mine, “local officials” accounts are required by law to be public.
If I send an email to my city councilman’s official email address, anyone on Earth can request to read it and that request WILL be granted. With no redaction. Certain political entities make blanket requests all the time and harvest email addresses, phone numbers, attitudes, and anything else in the body content.
These long-standing so-called “Sunshine laws” are meant to discourage under-the-table dealing by officials. Now in the internet era it also empowers lots of other bad actors.