Facebook Account Hacked & Changed To Chinese/Other Language (How To Fix)


This is an annoying thing which happened to me a while back, where I lost access to my Facebook account, and the language on it was changed to Chinese. I also started getting notifications through my email of groups my account had been added to (again in Chinese), but I couldn’t access my account as the password had been changed.

Facebook themselves are not much help on this topic – it’s very difficult to just speak to a real person and explain the situation to them so they can sort it – and whenever you try to login to your account, it just redirects to a page with a padlock on it and a load of Chinese symbols.

The difficulty when this happens is that most English speakers cannot understand any Chinese, so we don’t even know where the menu is to change the language back to English. It’s stuck on Chinese and it’s just a mass of symbols that we’ve no idea how to navigate through to reset our account! Moreover, there isn’t a language change option on this “account locked” page, so it seems like we’re stuck.

However, with a bit of playing around, I managed to get it fixed. There are roundabout ways of changing the language back to English with a little experimentation and by opening a few different tabs. We just need to open up a page that does have a language change option on it, in the same browser, and change it that way.

Here is how to do it in quick form:

  1. Attempt to log in to your Facebook account
  2. Open up the Facebook help page in another browser
  3. Copy & paste this page into your original browser (new tab)
  4. Change the language back to English (top right corner)
  5. Refresh the login page or log in again.
  6. Follow the steps to recover your account.

Let’s go through the process of getting your account back in step by step, easy form, with screenshots so you know what to do.

Step #1 – Bring Up The Chinese Language Padlock Page on Facebook

The first step is easy – just try to login to your Facebook account as always, and get it to bring up the page in Chinese with the padlock on it that you can’t understand. It’s also a good idea to have to email connected to that Facebook account already open in a new tab, so you are ready to begin resetting everything once you get it back into English.

Step #2 – Open Up The Facebook Help Page in a Different Browser

You might be able to do this in the same browser as you’re initially using, but it might just keep loading in Chinese, so it’s best to just do it in a new browser initially, to keep it separate and simple.

Open up a new browser (eg. Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera etc), and copy and paste this link to a Facebook page into the browser address bar and open it up. It’s the standard Facebook help page, and in English it looks something like this:

 

Because you are in a different browser not connected to the one signing into your hacked account, it should also display in English. We did it this way just so you can get your bearings on where everything is on the page for when we do the next step of loading it up in Chinese. You could paste this straight into your original browser but we’re making this as simple and “step-by-step” as possible.

Step #3 – Load This Page In Your Original Browser in a New Tab

The next step is just to now copy and paste this same help page link back into the original browser that you’re trying to log in to Facebook with. Just open up a new tab next to the padlock Chinese page and paste it in and load it up.

Because your account has been set to Chinese, when you paste this page into your connected browser that you’re trying to log in to Facebook with, it will likely display in Chinese. Language settings apply to all tabs you open in any logged in browser, so the help page will now look something like this:

 

But because you know how the page is laid out having seen it in English, it should be easy to change the language settings now.

Step #4 – Change Language Back To English In Top Right Corner

Now you know where everything is on this page, you can still find and change the language settings – just click the box in the top right corner:

A box should pop up allowing you to select the language to change it to. Type in English, or scroll down to it, select and click the blue box to change the language:

The page should now change back to the English version you initially loaded in Step #2.

Step #5 – Refresh or Reload The Original Login Page

As long as you did this last step in a different tab but on the same browser that you initially tried to login and got the page in Chinese with the padlock on it, this should now have changed your language settings back to English for all new Facebook tabs opened in that browser.

So either refresh or close and re-open the initial padlock login page, or begin entire login process again from an email link or opening a new tab, and it should now display in English. This happened some months ago for me and I forgot to take a screenshot, but it will say something about your account being locked, but at least it’s now in English.

Step #6 – Follow The Steps To Reset Your Account

Now everything has been reset back to English, just follow the steps as instructed on the “account locked” page to reset/recover your Facebook account. You might have to change your password, and you’ll have confirmation messages sent to your email.

To stop this happening again, make sure you change your password to something stronger than you used before.

Here are some good tips for creating a new password:

  • Make long (preferably 12 characters or longer)
  • Make it unique (different to anything you use on any other accounts)
  • Make it complex (include large and small case letters, numbers and special symbols like dots and slashes etc)
  • Don’t make it anything obvious (eg. “password” or “facebook”
  • Be sure to keep changing it periodically as well
  • If you used the same password that was hacked for other accounts, change the password for these accounts as well, especially if they’re related to anything banking or financial. You don’t want hackers getting access to these accounts.

And for more general online security, it’s highly recommended to use a Virtual Private Network or VPN connection to add another layer of encryption when logging into sensitive accounts such as Facebook, banking, email, etc. There are loads of Premium options out there that work well, but even some viable free options as well.

ProtonVPN are good for American readers, with unlimited free USA servers in lots of cities, and PrivadoVPN are good for UK and Canada readers, with a free servers in both countries a 10 GB of free data per month – plenty enough just for signing into private accounts when you need to – plus great value Premium plans if you use our link (links are affiliate links).

What To Do If You Still Can’t Regain Access To Your Account

If these steps fail to work for whatever reason in unlocking and regaining access to your account, there’s a couple more things you can do:

  1. If you’re based in the EU, check out this Single Point Of Contact Form to get in touch with Facebook (but it only works if you’re within the EU and not outside). There’s an option specifically for if your account has been hacked. Give as much detail as possible, including where it was hacked, what you’ve tried, account details etc. The more information you can provide, the more likely you are to hear back and/or get your account recovered.
  2. For users outside the EU, it’s more difficult to actually get in contact with Facebook and speak to a real person. But you can check out this help page from Facebook on recovering hacked accounts. But it’s most likely going to tell you a load of stuff you already know and have already tried.
  3. Try using a VPN to change your IP address so you are based inside the EU, and then use the single point of contact form linked above. But they may not respond to you if they realize your account is based outside the EU.

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