If you aren’t careful protecting your profile info and pictures, scam artists can take it and create an impostor account. This kind of identity theft is disturbing, easy and more common than you’d think—but thankfully, Facebook has a simple way for victims to report it.

To report an impostor account, go the page and click the “…”  located in the bottom right corner of the cover photo (which might even be your cover photo). Then click “Report,” and follow the instructions for notifying the site. But what if the cyber crook has blocked you from getting to the fake account in your name? There are ways around that, too. You can ask a Facebook friend to file a report for you, and then you’ll receive a message from your friend with a link that allows you to report the account yourself.

Having your identity stolen like this is one of the creepiest and most invasive ways that cybercriminals can violate your privacy. To stop it from happening in the first place, it’s a good idea to change your privacy settings so only friends can see your info, and to strictly control who can see your photos. Uploading pictures with a small file size is another effective measure to deter theft. It’s also essential that you limit your friend list visibility!

Be sure to check out this blog post to learn how bullies and cyber criminals can use fake profiles against you!

This post was updated in April 2017.

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