About a year ago, Facebook made a significant but largely unheralded change to the rules governing the removal of admin accounts from fan pages, and this change could pose a huge risk to the security of your business’ fan page.
Prior to June 2010, the original creator of a page could not be removed as an admin, but this security feature proved problematic in many ways. For instance, people who sold businesses could never be removed as admins from the account. Agencies that setup fan pages for clients were stuck as admins on pages, even though they were no longer engaged by the client. It was a truly shoddy situation and resulted in many unhappy Facebook users.
Fortunately, Facebook decided that something had to be done about the situation. Of course, with their vast resources and dedication to community, Facebook took a sober look at the issue and came up with a clever system that not only allowed a company to transfer ownership of a fan page but also allowed a company to add admins without fear of losing control.
Wrong!
Facebook simply flipped a switch. Now anyone who is an admin of a fan page can remove any other admin. Said another way…
Once you make someone an admin on your Facebook fan page, they can remove you as admin and take over your page.
And you will have virtually no recourse.
While this may be hard to believe, it is the current system at Facebook, and it has resulted in horror stories where disgruntled employees and contentious partners have stolen fan pages from the original creators. Facebook appears to be ignoring the issue. One poster at Facebook actually posted a list of forum posts under the title Facebook… Not Enough Threads About This Issue?
Protecting Your Facebook Fan Page from Being Stolen from Within
Unfortunately, until Facebook addresses this issue and decides to value its service and understand the importance of fan pages to its business users, the solution is simple:
You should not allow anyone to be an admin on your Facebook fan page. No one.
While this might seem like a drastic policy, the policy is commensurate with the risk involved. Imagine that you’ve spent years building up valuable content and a huge following for your small business fan page. Then one morning you wake up and you no longer have access to the page. You desperately go to Facebook’s help section, to various Facebook forums, and quickly find out that Facebook is a free service, and they don’t really do customer service. Your page is gone, and your recourse is limited to slow, legal processes outside of Facebook, remedies that are most likely not worth the trouble or cost for a small business fan page.
Do you have trusted employees? Of course you do; so do we. But do you trust their unhappy boyfriends, who could access your employee’s Facebook account, make themselves the admin of your page, and kick you and your employee off the page. What about the independent contractor you hired to manage your page? Ready to handle a contract dispute with him when he is holding your page hostage? The scenarios are endless – and not as rare as you think.
Facebook Security Through HootSuite and Other Third Party Apps
We have a few Facebook fan pages in our businesses. The one that is associated with my blog is still under development, and the ones for our retail businesses are active but in the beginning stages. Nonetheless, I consider all of the pages to be valuable properties, if not for their current value then for their future value. I certainly don’t want to lose the time we have spent on those pages and have to start over, not to mention risk the damage to our brands that could come if someone took over the page and actively used it!
On those pages, we use a third party application, HootSuite, to manage the pages, which allows staff to post and comment on the pages without becoming admins. I am sure there are many other third party applications out there that allow for similar management functions. Of course, by not granting full admin priveleges, there are limitations to what staff can do on the page, and I occasionally have to do things such as remove spam that only the admin can do. But that is a small price to pay for maintaining control of our fan page. For the moment, third party apps seem to be the only solution for safely delegating management of a fan page.
In the end, Facebook setup a system that was designed to solve one problem and created another one that is just as bad or worse. Your fan page can literally be taken away from you at the click of the button, and until that is changed, you would be well advised to be extremely cautious. Because once the page is gone, you cannot get it back.
So, what do you think? Should you allow other people as admins on your fan page? Do you know anyone who lost control of their page? Do you use third party apps like HootSuite to manage your fan pages?
Twitter: ericamallison
Adam, great post. I manage several pages for different clients and for some, I am the Admin (in addition to the client). For others, I make the client the Admin and log in under their credentials. Either way, this creates a trust issue when businesses ask someone else to manage their communities for them. Thankfully, my record hasn’t caught up to me yet
Erica Allison recently wrote about this…Sundays are for Sharing- Meet Stacy Vanden Heuvel
Twitter: bdorman264
Didn’t I see you on America’s Most Wanted?……………..just sayin’……………………:)
Bill Dorman recently wrote about this…Do I know you
I thought I recognized her!
Erica, well, of course, YOUR clients are safe!
I couldn’t agree with you more about not putting all of your eggs in the Facebook basket. People have become so comfortable with Facebook that they seem to forget that Facebook is a very large Corporation that is going to pursue its economic interests, whether or not it is beneficial to everyone who uses their site or not. You’re right — it could all go poof. Look at the topic we are discussing here. FB changed the admin rule with barely a whisper. People lost their pages and didn’t know why. They thought their pages were secure under the old rule and didn’t even hear about the new rule until it was too late.
I certainly want to put more time into developing my FB page, but I can’t imagine I would ever treat it as more than an outpost.
Twitter: bdorman264
Insidious…………..actually I have been somewhat naive w/ no concerns about privacy or control. However, you make some good points and even though you expect people to just play nice it certainly isn’t always the case in here.
I know some people who recently set up fan pages and I might bring this to their attention. For the most part if probably won’t be an issue, but it certainly can.
How’s the weather in Orlando………………….we can sure use some rain can’t we?
Hope all is well and your day has been a good one.
Bill Dorman recently wrote about this…Do I know you
Bill, good to see you. You’re right, most of the time it should not be a problem (you would hope). I think what inspired me to write about it is just how permanent the repercussions are. There are literally no methods for getting your page back other than through the good graces of the person who took it from you.
Weather in Orlando? Partly cloudy with 100% chance of Casey Anthony.
Do you get our TV stations or Tampa’s down there? Possibly you’ve been spared a bit of the circus.
Thanks for stopping by! Hope your day was excellent as well.
Twitter: bdorman264
I’m right in the middle so we get both Orlando and Tampa stations. I can’t believe what a circus that case has become. She parties for a whole month before reporting her child missing………………really?
Bill Dorman recently wrote about this…Do I know you
oh!! with a fan page containing 15,000 fans i started to become scared!!
thanks for the post, very informative and ture!
Hi Farouk, Sounds like you’ve worked hard to build a large fan base. Hope the information helps you protect it. Thanks for stopping by!
Adam Toporek recently wrote about this…PaperLi- Clever Curation or Spammy Automation
I am a little late to the party here, but thanks for the head’s up on this. I am the only admin on my pages and will remain so. Good point about using HootSuite to give access to others without relinquishing full control.
Thanks!
Tammi Kibler recently wrote about this…Facebook Fan Pages: Who Needs Them?
Hi Tammi,
You’re never too late to participate here!
It’s amazing how few people know about this. Sounds like you’re keeping tight control of your pages, so that’s good. As mentioned, Hootsuite has worked well in solving most of the problem.
I appreciate you stopping by!
Adam Toporek recently wrote about this…The Definition of Customer Loyalty
Soooooooooo….
I see articles and blogs about this issue all over the internet. In fact a close friend of mine now has a well-developed business page on FB with no admins.
Is there was way to recover all the work and content that went into it? How does a page creator (who should also be an admin) get their rights back to their page? From what I’ve read, FB isn’t helping any.
Hi Diana,
Thank you for your questions. I haven’t looked into this in any detail since I wrote the post, but I have not heard of anything changing. My understanding is that is very difficult (if not virtually impossible) to recover the page once you have lost it. That is why I wrote the post, to help people understand the risks ahead of time and not get in that position.
Maybe your friend can recover some of the material by copying it off the publicly displayed portions of the site? Past that, unfortunately, I am not sure of any other alternatives. Best of luck!
Hi Adam, I understand the risk with a Facebook page we still want to run but what about when we want to sell a Facebook page, we make the new owner an admin and they remove us from the page, are any other pages affected?
I have six pages, one for each domain. I’m selling a domain and want to turn over the Facebook page but I don’t want to risk the other five Facebook pages. Are the considered separate and safe, along with my personal account?
Brian D. Hawkins recently wrote about this…Ten Creative QR Codes For Inspiration (PICS)
Hi Brian,
Thanks for the question. First, an FYI, I am not a tech guy or expert in Facebook, so I am only replying from my personal experience.
I too have multiple pages and had to give a social media company access to one of them. It was pretty easy (have them like the page, and then grant admin privileges) and did not in any way affect my other pages. As soon as I did it, I triple checked my other pages to make sure it did not cross over. It did not. So, if they removed me as admin tomorrow, it would be isolated to the page they were given access to. I think as long as you are careful granting the privileges, you should be fine.
To be extra cautious, you could do a test run and try it with a wife or close friend whom you trust to give you back the page.
Hope this helps! Let us know how it goes.
Thanks Adam, that’s a great idea. I’ll try a test page with my wife first.
Brian D. Hawkins recently wrote about this…Ten Creative QR Codes For Inspiration (PICS)
Would anyone know how to establish new Facebook page (not group) admins if, through a series of unfortunate events and past employees, a company loses track of who is admin on their page and all known past admins have revoked their access? It is nigh on impossible to contact Facebook, and the company I work for is in a bit of a bind here because starting a new page would obviously mean losing the current page name and all of its followers. Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks.
Hi Jerath,
Sorry to hear about your problem. As I mentioned in my last comment here, since writing this post I still have not heard of any way to recover your page once you’ve lost it (outside of contacting Facebook — not so easy, as you’ve obviously found — or pursuing legal or other non-technical methods).
If I hear of anything changing on that front I will post it here, however, the warning behind my post seems to still be relevant — try not to lose control of your page because it is very difficult to gain it back. I wish I had something better to tell you.
Best of luck with your page. I hope you can recover it.