An inconsistency in Facebook’s Help Pages and in the actual working of things has caused quite a lot of ruckus from Page owners. Years of building up a fanbase can all come to nothing the moment the page is hacked – something that Facebook has dubbed impossible. Yet this very thing has already happened to several people and the worst thing about it is that they’re not getting much help from the social networking site itself.

“Every admin has equal access to and the same abilities as the other admins for a Page, however the original creator of the Page may never be removed by other Page admins.”

That statement above is the exact wording in Facebook’s FAQ section and many page owners have come to rely upon it as completely true. Unfortunately, it’s not. Users have found out that new admins do have exactly the same rights as the original admin – and that includes removing the original admin from his post. Once removed, the only thing that the original admin can do is to report the issue to Facebook, claiming that their removal from their positions constitutes “infringement or violation of their rights”. Aside from a slow response time, this should be no problem, right? Wrong. Apparently, Facebook’s solution to hacked pages is to delete them right off the bat. If you’re a page owner and you’ve spent years building up your fan base through Facebook, having the page deleted can be a rather painful punch in the gut.

So the question now is – why is there a discrepancy with reality and the FAQ page in the first place? With their current system, if one of the new admins happened to have a fit of temporary insanity and removed the other admins, then the page is doomed and years of hard work could go down the drain. Facebook says that the only way for a page to be hacked is if the original owner somehow gets his e-mail address accessed. But obviously this isn’t the case because if just one of the admins has malicious plans for the page, he can simply achieve full control with one click. It’s a question of trust, to be sure. But then again, when can anybody be 100% sure about trust?

Of course, there’s an upside in giving the new admins the same privileges too. For example, if the original admin had left the company, then other admins can simply delete him. But this too can be easily remedied by better admin controls. If the page owner can dictate the privileges given to any new admin – i.e, giving a new admin the ability to change the layout but not to delete other administrators – then the possibility of problems arising would be considerably lessened. Page administrators may also be given the option to pass on the torch of being the main admin as well, so that when the time comes that they have to leave the company, they can simply surrender their administrator rights.

Right now, though, the only thing that page owners can do to keep their pages secure is to be vigilant about who they promote as administrators on a page. If you don’t trust one of the admins completely, then there’s no way that your page will be completely secure.