IPPO has yet to recover ‘hacked’ FB page

By Jennifer P. Rendon

Efforts to recover the hacked Facebook page of the Iloilo Police Provincial Office (IPPO) have been in vain.

Major Rolando Araño, IPPO spokesperson, said they have yet to gain access to their Facebook page, as of this writing.

In a case conference with the Regional Anti-Cybercrime Unit (RACU) 6, the IPPO was informed that they might regain access to their social media page within two weeks.

It appeared that there are other Facebook users who encountered the same glitch.

Araño said they received at least four complaints from possible “phishing” victims.

Phishing is the fraudulent practice of sending emails or other messages purporting to be from reputable companies in order to induce individuals to reveal personal information, such as passwords and credit card numbers.

In the case of the IPPO page, one of its six admins claimed to have received an email from the “Facebook Business Managers” advising them to activate the Business Account of their page since it has almost 50,000 followers.

The move apparently gave hackers access to the page.

The IPPO FB page has currently 49,000 followers and 32,000 likes.

“The admin did it in good faith without knowing that the email was a poser,” Araño said.

Meanwhile, Lieutenant Colonel Artemio Ricabo, RACU-6 chief, said the IPPO has joined the list of several other FB pages and accounts that got hacked.

He claimed that the hacking was usually an offshoot of phishing activities.

Following what happened, Araño advised the public not to entertain emails from unverified sources.

“We were also told to regularly change our passwords,” he said.

In the case of IPPO, the hacker has not posted any status or messages since Thursday morning.