Police have issued a warning after hackers shut down a Facebook page belonging to a business in Derbyshire.

Carlo Laurenti lost access to the page for his business, Derbyshire Wedding and Events, after hackers gained access to his page.

He clicked on a link after he received a notification saying that his page had been impersonating another.

The notification was fake and, within seconds, Carlo’s computer screen filled with various images, including indecent ones of children.

He lost access to his Facebook page and reported what had happened to Derbyshire Constabulary due to the nature of the images that had been displayed on his laptop.

The force is now warning businesses to be aware of how hackers try to access Facebook pages.

Detective Sergeant Steve Judge, who leads the Cybercrime and Digital Investigations Unit at Derbyshire Constabulary, said: “Sadly we are seeing criminal hackers using indecent images of children to ‘cover their tracks’ after gaining access to business pages on social media.

“Once they have gained access to an account through the victim clicking a link, they will look to take any personal of financial details from the page, even buying advertising, before posting explicit images to get the page shut down by Facebook.

“In Derbyshire we have worked with Facebook to help victims of hacking to regain access to their accounts.

“We have also done further work to review Facebook’s processes, to ensure that they can pinpoint the hackers rather than punish the victims of hacking by erasing all trace of valuable pages that people rely on for their businesses.”

You can read more advice from Derbyshire Constabulary here.

Picture credit – Simon from Pixabay

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