2 Wake County bakeries lose Facebook business pages to hackers

RALEIGH, N.C. (WTVD) -- Hackers took over the Facebook business pages for two Wake County bakeries, costing the owners untold business.

"They changed everything. They changed the name profile, picture, cover photo," Audrey Jansen said. Jansen owns a bakery in Holly Springs called Beauty and the Batter.

Jansen's business Facebook page went from showing customers her latest cake creations to a page filled with memes about ADHD, with the hackers even changing the name to Funny ADHD.

"I had probably over 100 people reach out to me saying, 'Are you OK over there? What's going on? Why did you change your business name?' I was like, 'No, it was not me. I was definitely hacked.'"

Jansen said despite having two-factor authentication on her business account, it was still hacked.

"I had no notification. I had no email that somebody had logged on."

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The hacker blocked Jansen from accessing the page and started posting daily about ADHD. With more than 7,000 followers before the hack, Jannsen said losing the page is negatively impacting her business.

"Very important. It's probably 95% of my business. I have clients on there that I can't access, future clients trying to contact me and I have no way to reach them besides posting on mom groups and hoping that people share it," Jansen said.

Now Jansen has to rely on people contacting her business through her Instagram page, which was not taken over during the hack.

The same thing happened to Apex bakery A Taste of Brooklyn's Facebook page.

"I just saw this a bunch of animals on my page. All my followers were contacting me saying, 'Is everything OK? Is the business all right?' They thought I was out of business," owner Kimberly Klobus said.

Her bakery was not out of business, instead hackers had just stolen her page and turned it into Animal Arts.

"I had my followers report it, and then they're all contacting me saying like they even blocked them for reporting it."

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Klobus said the hack also hurt her business, because she previously used the page to post promotions for her business daily.

"That's how people see what I have every day in the store."

Both bakery owners tell ABC11 Troubleshooter Diane Wilson they have reported the hack to Facebook several times. Wilson reached out to Facebook but never received correspondence in return.

The social media company does have instructions on what steps to take if this happens, both ladies said they tried each one and hackers still control their business pages.

"The most stressful part is they won't respond. They're not helping. And this has been over a week now," Jansen said.

To protect your account, Facebook offers several steps one is to not use your password anywhere else and it should be very hard to guess. Another tip is to not respond to random texts or emails with links, as if you click on the links it could put malicious software on your device and give hackers access to your account. Also make sure you have two-factor authentication, as you should get alerted if anyone tries to get into your account.