Jesse Jones: Protecting yourself from Facebook identity theft

SEATTLE — You can buy anything from nearly anyone on Facebook. But it’s who you buy the items from those matters.

Right now-Kerry Jackson is helping friends and family sell some really nice things.

“Cars, trucks, a water slide, hot tub, things like that,” he says, tongue firmly planted in cheek.

Problem is, he’s not the guy doing the deals.

It’s a scammer.

“I got a text from my friend in Mississippi saying, how large is the hot tub you’re selling? And I don’t have a hot tub. What is this? He said, I think you’ve been hacked”, Kerry says.

What’s worse is that his account had been hacked weeks ago.

“I tried to log in, I was blocked, my password is no longer valid”, he explained.

Kerry says he alerted Facebook and followed their rules to get the page back under his control. However, Kerry says, “The notification said that they’ll get back with me within 48 hours. It has now been two and a half weeks since that happened.”

Of course, Kerry’s hoping beyond hope that no one falls for the scam.

But unfortunately, someone did.

His friend Yale from Indiana saw a post from the thief-he followed up with a message and sent the imposter cash.

Yale says, “Because Kerry is such a great guy and people trust him, they’re willing to trust whatever’s on his Facebook.”

Also, just a few weeks ago this kind of thing happened to a family who says they were hacked. And while that happened the bad guys tried to sell fraudulent Taylor Swift tickets.

Back to Kerry, he had friends tell Facebook about the issue.

And he’s been waiting patiently to hear anything back.

Kerry says, “They are committing fraud. They’re committing a crime pretending to be me.”

Some tips from Facebook to help protect your account include:

• Set up two factor authentication.
• Don’t accept friend requests from people you don’t know.
• Because they could send you malicious messages.
• Be wary of suspicious links and never share your login information.

And in better news-we’ve just learned that Kerry is back in control of his Facebook page.

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