(Screen grab provided)
Hundreds of social media users around the world were unexpectedly kicked out of their Facebook accounts in the past few weeks before their username was mysteriously changed to Lily Collins.
It also seems that the hackers behind this spare no one. Social media users from South Africa and Botswana as far as Britain, India and the USA have had to hand over their Facebook accounts to one Lily Collins in the past few weeks.
A Facebook group was set up about three weeks ago for victims of the so-called Lily Collins hack. The group currently has 893 members.
Hundreds of complaints have also been reported elsewhere on Facebook.
The majority of social media users have since been unable to regain access to their accounts and have been forced to create new accounts, which means they have lost years of photos and memories.
“More than 10 years of photos and memories are just gone,” wrote one of the social media users scrambling to access their account.
Facebook has also been accused of being of little or no help since the so-called Lily Collins hack came to light.
Cynthia Suddes, an event planner from Germiston in the East Rand, tells Rhewal that on Friday she suddenly lost access to her personal as well as her company’s accounts on Facebook. The respective accounts have existed for more than 10 years.
(Screen grab provided)
“I went on Facebook and saw that I had been unsubscribed. I then also see that my username on Facebook is now Lily Collins.
“I immediately tried to log in and received a notification that my account has been disabled. I declared a dispute, but Facebook let me know that the decision was final and that my account was closed.
“I tried everything but could not access my account again. I also received no feedback or help from Facebook.”
Suddes says it is incredibly bad for her that she lost access to her account on Facebook as she saved photos and memories of her late husband and brother on it. “You also build up a lot of friends over the years and I lost them all.”
It is not clear at this stage how the hackers gained access to the accounts of hundreds of social media users around the world.
(Screen grab provided)
Suddes does not recall clicking on any suspicious ads or strange links before she was hacked. “I don’t even accept friend requests from people I don’t know. I don’t know how they got access.”
However, some social media users suspect that it was the link to software for a fake Chat GPT program and extension that they clicked on, which ultimately gave hackers access to their accounts on Facebook.
The publication PC World report hackers use fake ChatGPT extensions to infiltrate social media accounts and lock out users. The fake extension reportedly uses the Chrome extension to sniff out active Facebook cookies and send stolen data to the hackers’ server.
Hackers then log into Facebook before changing the username to “Lily Collins”.
According to the report, these zombie accounts are used to spread malicious advertisements and extremist propaganda.
Suddes wants to inform people about this prank, because she herself did not know about it. “If I had known about it, I might have changed my password regularly and protected my account better.”
