Jim Shella: The media, social media and Jim Banks

I made a fortune on bitcoin and used the money to buy a rural estate. That’s a version of the message my Facebook friends received, sent from my Facebook page, a few weeks ago. It was followed up by a sales pitch for crypto currency. It didn’t come from me. I was hacked, and the hackers tried to fool my friends and family into falling for a scam with a fictional story of newfound riches.

Some of them bought the story. I received messages of congratulations and even an email requesting a meeting to discuss the finer points of crypto ownership. Of course, many of my friends recognized immediately that it wasn’t the type of message I would send. I don’t use that many exclamation points. I don’t own crypto and have no interest in farming.

I can only hope that none of my friends fell for the phony sales pitch. I apologize to all of them for the failure to secure my Facebook account.

Here’s what happened. I have two Facebook pages. One is a personal page. The other is what’s called a fan page, created when I was still working in television. I have preserved it because it holds a number of important photos and videos from my career. But I don’t update it.

One day, I got a message telling me I had an inactive account that would be deleted unless I took action. It called for a password change. The message made sense to me, and I thought it was from Meta, the parent company of Facebook. It was not. It was the hackers, and when I changed my password, it gave them access to my account.

They removed my email address and phone number from the account and inserted theirs. That made it impossible for me to recover the account. They sent the phony messages and deleted friends who warned others that I was hacked. They accepted new friends interested in crypto. They blocked my family members. They changed the language on the account.

Numerous reports of the hacking were made to Meta by me and by friends and family, and there was no response. My Internet research uncovered a company willing to help me recover my account for a healthy sum with no promise of success.

I was ready to pursue that when I got a phone call out of the blue from a staffer for U.S. Sen. Jim Banks. He said the senator heard I had been hacked. I requested help if there was any available. He put me in touch with another staffer who talked about a “Facebook contact” who might be able to help. After several days, I received an email from Facebook with instructions on how to recover my account. They didn’t work, and Facebook did not respond to my replies.

After nearly a week of trial and error, password changes, the use of multiple devices, and struggles with the Facebook app, I got my account back. For that, I can and do thank Banks and his staff. That’s constituent service.

Did I get assistance because I’m in the media? I don’t know. Maybe. But I know the senator’s staff has assisted others with similar problems.

Then, the day after I got my account back, I saw a headline reporting that Banks filed a bill to eliminate federal funding for public broadcasting. I worked in public broadcasting for 25 years and believe in it.

I think it’s more important than Facebook.•

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Shella hosted WFYI’s “Indiana Week in Review” for 25 years and covered Indiana politics for WISH-TV for more than three decades. Send comments to [email protected].

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