A WOMAN who was left panicking after her Facebook profile was hacked and she lost access to two crucial business pages has issued a warning to others.

Jade Waddington, 33, of Wrose, was kicked out of her account last Saturday evening and her profile name was changed to “Lily Collins”, with a new image used. There is no suggestion that the person behind the hack is actually called Lily Collins.

Mrs Waddington managed to gain access again on Thursday but wanted to make people aware of the dangers of hackers and her stressful ordeal over the past week.

The process first began when Mrs Waddington received a notification that someone had accessed her personal Facebook account – which had 2-Factor Authentication enabled.

She said: “I’ve no idea how they’ve managed to do it.

“It came through as a message, ‘was this you’, so I pressed no, this wasn’t me, then I’d not really thought much about it.

"Someone text me and said, ‘why has your Facebook changed to Lily Collins.’”

The hacker also changed the email address associated with the account, so Mrs Waddington was unable to find a route in.

She said: “I’m guessing they were posting something outrageous, my account was permanently blocked.”

Mrs Waddington was most concerned about her two business pages on the platform, where her profile was the sole admin.

One of these is “The Dreams & Giggles Glamping Co.” – running children’s tepee sleepovers – which Mrs Waddington bought a year ago and has 3,300 followers.

The other – candle business Yorkshire Wixx – she built up from scratch three years ago.

Both rely on bookings through the Facebook page and while Mrs Waddington had business for a couple of weeks, she was concerned this would dry up with her unable to access the pages to respond to people.

She said: “We’ve got things coming up, holidays booked, because I never thought this money could just disappear.”

The most frustrating part for the businesswoman was the pages were still there, but she was unable to get in touch with anybody, or link a new account, despite painstaking efforts.

Mrs Waddington desperately searched for a way of resolving the situation and came across a group on Facebook called “Hacked & changed account to (Lily Collins)”, which she joined.

Bradford Telegraph and Argus: Chloe Waddington, 33, of Wrose had her Facebook profile hacked and lost access to two of her business pagesChloe Waddington, 33, of Wrose had her Facebook profile hacked and lost access to two of her business pages (Image: Telegraph & Argus)

The group has more than 1,000 members who have been a victim of the same hack, many of whom run business pages, according to Mrs Waddington.

She tried Facebook’s automated help service to no avail, then tried to contact as many people as possible from the social media company – from a list posted in the group, as well as messaging staff on LinkedIn.

The Telegraph & Argus contacted Facebook on Wednesday and Mrs Waddington said she was able to somehow get into her account on Thursday where she reverted the changes and quickly added her husband as an admin to her two business pages to prevent further issues.