BROCKTON (FOX 25 / MyFoxBoston.com) – A Brockton family’s grief over the loss of their father was recently made worse when a hacker took over his dormant Facebook account.
Kaitlyn Marshalsea tells FOX 25 that her family realized someone had hacked into their deceased father Michael Marshalsea’s Facebook when they began seeing the account “liking” links.
“At first we made a joke about it, oh Dad is liking stuff on Facebook,” says Kaitlyn Marshalsea, “And we thought it was funny and then the whole thing changed.”
Pretty soon Michael’s entire profile changed. Kaitlyn says the hacker changed his occupation, interests and marital status.
Michael’s four children decided to leave the page up after his August 2010 death as a way for people to memorialize him. According to the Boston Herald , the Cambridge native used his Facebook account to stay in contact with his children and loved ones after moving to Florida just before his death.
Family members reported the activity to Facebook and were asked to provide a death certificate. After contacting the Boston Herald about their social media nightmare, they thought the site was taken down.
“If somebody was to sign back in, everything would pop back up,” says Kaitlyn.
Michael’s Facebook page is still viewable to those people he added as friends on his account.
The Marshalsea family hopes to save other families from going through a similar situation with one important reminder: what you post on the internet is in cyberspace forever.
“It’s the internet. We never thought it would happen to us. If they have his email address, what else can they get out of him?”
Article source: http://www.myfoxboston.com/dpp/news/local/familys-added-pain-over-the-hijacking-of-deceased-fathers-facebook-20120218
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