Update: Non-Admins Can Suggest Edits to Your Local Facebook Pages
Update: mea culpa time. Facebook added this feature to all pages with a local component (those set up as local pages or on other pages where the information tab has been edited to include an address). Instead of editing, though, this feature really just allows you to suggest edits so facebook can get better information on local businesses.
According to Josh Constine, Lead Writer of Inside Facebook, “The ‘Suggest Edits’ does not allow Facebook users to make unauthorized changes to Pages they aren’t an admin of. Instead, it allows users to suggest a change to the Page’s basic information which Facebook or a Page’s admins can then decide to implement or ignore.”
You can read IF’s post on the subject here. Note the difference in their screenshot from the original one on this post all the way at the bottom. The first time you get any inkling that you are only suggesting a change is after you hit the button that says “Edit”, when you get this screenshot:
Lesson re-learned. I’ll take it all the way through to the end and actually make the edits before I post. Was scared to harm someone’s page, but could have done something innocuous. My apologies for the confusion. I’ll leave this up so you can see how to pull down your page in the future if you need to do so for whatever reason.
I’m sure (hope?) this will get corrected soon before stuff hits the fan, but right now it’s possible for non-admins to edit your facebook pages. Obviously, this could be disastrous.
Your best bet for the time being may be to take down your page altogether. Will update here and on our own facebook page when this gets fixed / we learn more.
Update: Should have included this before, but the easiest way to protect yourself is to just take the page off-line. Here’s how:
- Click on the Edit Page button.
- This should take you directly to the Manage Permissions tab. At the top of the tab, check the box for “Only admins can see this page.”
- Click on the Save Changes button.
Then once things return back to normal, just go back in, uncheck, and save changes again.
And just in case, yes, I did check a friend’s company page who went through these steps. If you put in the url, it just redirects you to your facebook home.
Also, I’ve decided not to make this a step-by-step guide on how to hack into other people’s facebook pages. But it’s not difficult. And the loophole is still there.
