Hacking, scamming, phishing, cyber fraud… These terms were once only vague notions to anyone other than tech workers.

But they are now very familiar parts of our everyday lexicon as our online lives continue to swirl with potential criminal activity.

In the creative sector, arts freelancers and small businesses are especially vulnerable to these threats, as hackers seek to target smaller entities whose security systems lack the robust protocols of their larger corporate counterparts.

According to several creatives whose social media accounts have recently been hacked, it’s all too easy for valuable online content to go up in smoke, with few options to retrieve lost data or reinstate accounts.

The stories of two such arts freelancers reveal there are depressingly few avenues to recoup lost assets after an account has been hacked. Instead, you can feel like a powerless cog within the tech giants’ machines, with little or no support offered from the tech companies’ side to help fix your problems.

Stories from the frontline of social media hacking

Until two months ago, arts journalist Stephen A Russell had been using his personal Facebook page as an important promotional platform to share his articles and expand his readership.

But after noticing what he describes as an “obviously fake” business account newly linked to his personal Facebook account, he became suspicious, and attempted to contact Facebook/Meta to alert the platform of the fraudulent activity.  

However, it was only after hours spent trawling Facebook’s labyrinthine online help pages and having ‘chats’ with Meta support-bots that Russell finally got through to a human Facebook support worker who offered to call him by phone to help him with his concerns.

As Russell tells ArtsHub, “In that phone call I had to repeatedly tell the Facebook representative that, ‘No, I definitely had not set up the business account that was appearing as linked to my real Facebook account, and that my account was almost certainly being hacked’.”

Then, after only a few minutes on the line, Russell says the phone connection suddenly and mysteriously went dead.

“Since then, I have had zero contact from Facebook. No call backs, no emails – nothing,” he says.

“The only action taken by Meta since then has been to wipe my Facebook account completely,” Russell continues.

“That’s years and years worth of personal and professional content and conversations – gone.”

Alarmingly, the hackers also gained access to Russell’s credit card details that the writer says he had used only a few times on Facebook, to make donations to charitable causes that came up on his feed.

“I definitely didn’t have my credit card stored in my Facebook account, but the hackers managed to locate the historical transactions I had made there,” he explains.

“They also managed to change my two-step authentication security email address and phone number on the account, and I received no alert from Facebook that these details had been changed, and so that blocked me from accessing my Facebook page ever again.”

Overall, the writer says the loss of all his Facebook interactions over the years has been devastating, but the realisation that Facebook’s security systems are ill-equipped to keep his account safe from hackers, is probably the rudest shock of all.

“I found the situation terrifying and have found Facebook manifestly and disgracefully negligent in their complete lack of support,” he tells ArtsHub.

“I’m also quite disgusted at how terrible their security evidently is, and I think many people are simply unaware of how dangerous it can be.”

Unknowable costs of hacks to artists

Since losing his Facebook account, Russell has felt dislocated from his social circles and family overseas, and he has also been missing important business connections, too.

“Facebook was a big source of my readership, so it’s been a real blow,” he says. “And I’ll never know exactly how much it’s cost me [from a business point of view], because it’s just been totally erased, overnight.”

Like Russell, Brisbane-based dance artist Neridah Waters is also feeling uncertain of the real costs to her creative enterprise since her Facebook accounts were hacked in similar fashion one month ago.

“I expect there are clients trying to contact me through my hacked account, but I can no longer access it, so I will never know,” Waters tells ArtsHub.

The dancer and choreographer, who has been running her dance workshops and events business for the past 15 years, had her personal Facebook page wiped by Meta a month ago, after it was compromised by a hacker.

“The hackers got in through my email address that was linked to my personal Facebook account,” she explains.

“That was bad enough, but the more serious result is that because my personal Facebook account is the administrator of my business’ Facebook account, I have lost access to both.

“My business Facebook account and page actually still exists online,” she continues. “But I can’t access it because my administrator access is gone. Which is weird – because I have a page that’s still live, but I can’t access or update it.”

In addition to the potential reputational damage of having outdated content posted online, Waters says the hack also resulted in untold hours of logistical work for her to ensure one of her biggest events of the year could still happen.

“The hack occurred three weeks before a major dance event that I produced for the Brisbane Festival, with 300 performers involved,” she says.

“I was managing all the communications for that event through Facebook Groups, so I had to somehow re-establish connections with all those groups and performers.

“In the end I used my Instagram account for most of that, but it was really stressful.”

Waters adds that, like Russell, she has found Facebook/Meta to be of little help throughout the ordeal.

“I haven’t been able to contact a human at Facebook at all,” she says. “The best that’s been offered are links to Facebook’s ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ support page, and other help links that just take me in circles.”

Tips to protect your data

As Russell and Waters have been made all too aware, doing business on social media can be one of the easiest things in the world, until the system breaks down and you are left vulnerable and subject to unforeseen costs.

That said, there are a few simple ways to help protect yourself from worst case outcomes (though there are still no guarantees):

Some top tips:

1. Vary passwords across your online accounts (never use the same password for more than one account).

2. Use complex passwords (over 12 characters).

3. Enable two-factor-authentication security protocols on account logins.

4. Ensure multiple account administrators where relevant (if one admin account is compromised, there will still be an admin who can access the account).

5. Monitor account logins regularly (most account dashboards can show you the last time an account was accessed, and by which device, in which location).

6. Report suspicious account activity immediately (but, as above, if you are using a free account, don’t expect to receive effective customer support).

7. Be mindful of the risk of hacking and make a plan for worse case scenarios. Ask yourself, how will I operate a business if I suddenly lose my social media account/s? How can I back up my most important content/contacts etc?

This article was originally published by our friends at ArtsHub Australia.

Written by Jo Pickup.