Port Solent photographer who had given up hope of getting hacked social media page back has account restored after intervention from The News

Ian Haskell, who is a regular photographer for Port Solent’s car meets, had been left in limbo and desperately trying to retrieve his Facebook account that was taken over on June 2 under a new profile name of Chris Andrea, as previously reported.

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The 61-year-old, who has had the account for 16 years, tried contacting Facebook and going through their appeal process - but was met by a wall of silence with him unable to talk to a human. When he appealed to the social media giant he said he was thwarted because the email address used for access to the account had been changed.

Ian, of Locks Heath, said last month: “My Facebook account which I have had since July 2007 was hacked and the cover photo, profile photo and name changed to Chris Andrea. My email has been changed, password changed and I no longer have access. It has been very frustrating.

“Everything on the page of Chris Andrea is mine with my photos, friends and posts. When I tried reporting it Facebook asked for the email address of my account but because it has been changed the email no longer exists.

“If you look at the Facebook page for Port Solent Car Meets it has a gallery of 262 photos of the cars with my name watermarked in the bottom of each picture…the post now appears to have been made by Chris Andrea which obviously it was not.”

But following the restoration of his account a month on from it being hacked, Ian said: “All now working and restored thanks to your help. There doesn't appear to be too much damage apart from a few new added unknown friends which I have now deleted and several messages in Messenger to various women, which I've also deleted. I've changed back the cover and profile photo to my own as well.”

The photographer previously said it was “very frustrating” trying to interact with Facebook which had concluded nothing untoward had taken place. He said: “I have reported to Facebook but because you can't get any interaction from a human and only a computer, it looks at the page for Chris Andrea and sees it as a normal account.

“They won't take any action and won't remove the profile. I have been going round in circles getting nowhere with Facebook and very unimpressed with their care and security of their customers.

“If the account can be recovered then so be it but I just want the name Chris Andrea and anything associated with him deleted and I will probably delete the account myself and may or may not start again with another login account.”

Ian’s predicament featured many of the similarities that Ian’s colleague Jason White, the organiser of Port Solent car meets, suffered earlier this year when he was locked out of his Facebook account by hackers who made demands for money. On that occasion, intervention from The News again secured restoration of the account.

A spokeswoman for Meta, which owns Facebook, said Ian’s account had been restored now.