Can I ring Facebook to get my account back?

No. Facebook has no telephone support line for personal accounts, so there is nobody to ring, in Australia or anywhere else. Every number that appears when you search for one belongs to somebody who wants a fee or wants to finish stealing the account. Recovery happens only through facebook.com/hacked and the related official pages, and it never costs anything. If a voice on the telephone is asking for your password or a login code, that is the theft happening rather than support.

What is the fastest way to get a hacked Facebook account back?

Use a device you have logged in from before, on your usual home internet, and go straight to facebook.com/hacked. Facebook recognises familiar devices and asks far fewer questions, so what takes days on a borrowed computer can take minutes on your own. If your email address and mobile are still on the account, this is usually all that is needed.

They changed my email and phone number. Is it gone?

Not necessarily, but be prepared for it to take a while. With no contact details left to send a code to, Facebook falls back to confirming your identity, which commonly takes several days and does sometimes fail. Start today rather than next week, because these get harder with age, and use a device you have used for Facebook before. Check your old email for a Facebook notice about the change too, as it may carry a link that reverses it outright.

Someone is messaging my friends pretending to be me. What do I do?

Warn people by another route first, a text message or a phone call, because messages from the account itself may not be trusted. Tell them plainly not to send money and never to pass on a code. Then work through the recovery steps on this page. Reporting the account for impersonation also helps, especially if a copy of your profile has been made.

Is it worth paying someone to recover my account?

No. There is no paid route into Meta that you do not already have for free, so anybody charging you is either doing exactly what this page describes, or taking your money and disappearing. Several will also ask for your password or a code during the process, which hands them the account outright. Nobody legitimate charges for account recovery. If you have already paid somebody, ring your bank today, because a recent payment can sometimes still be stopped.

How do I stop this happening again?

Two things do almost all the work. Turn on two factor authentication, so a stolen password is not enough by itself. Then use a different password for Facebook than for your email, because most break ins start with a password reused from somewhere that was breached years ago. A password manager makes both painless and is worth the afternoon it takes to set up.

Hacked account help

If someone else has got into your Facebook or Instagram, start with the guide that matches what actually happened. Each one walks through the official recovery route in order, in plain English. If you would rather not do it alone, call us and we will sit with you while you work through it.

Facebook

My Facebook account has been hacked: what to do, in order

The official Facebook recovery route for each way an account gets taken, the device trick that resolves most cases, and how to spot the recovery scammers.