A COUPLE in Prestatyn have said their Rhyl-based photography business is at risk of closure after the “awful” impact that their Facebook page being "hacked" has had.
Stephen Jones, and his fiancée, Lyndsay, run SLJ Photography at its studio at 26a Queen Street, after Stephen set up the business 15 years ago.
But after a group of hackers, believed to be based in the Philippines and South Africa, locked them out of their own page, which boasted roughly 9,600 followers, business has sadly plummeted.
The consequences have included Stephen and Lyndsay working with a “skeleton staff”, facing having to scale back their upcoming wedding costs, and fearing losing their business altogether.
Lyndsay, who lives with Stephen and their five children, said: “Someone messaged me on February 27 saying: ‘Is this you posting adverts about cleaning products on your Facebook page?’
“I went to go on to the Facebook page, but it wouldn’t let me access it as an administrator. We then noticed that Stephen’s Facebook account had been deleted.
“We were stressing and panicking, and the following day, Facebook said it’d take them 48 hours to sort.
“At that point, the hackers had kept me on the page as an employee, but not an administrator, so I could see who the administrators were, but couldn’t action anything on the page.
“Our PayPal account was linked to the page, so it was a way to access our finances. They got about £200 out of us.”
Lyndsay was then removed altogether from the page, which, she said, accounted for about 95 per cent of their business prior to the hack.
The devastating impact that this has had has jeopardised the business after years of hard work to grow it, she added.
Customers can still contact the business via its website or new Facebook page created since the hack, but they are still struggling to reach the same amount of people.
She said: “We had just over 9,600 Facebook followers at the time, which isn’t a huge amount in the grand scheme of things, but is huge for a small family business.
“We had pride in the fact that we’d built this up. We had customers from all over North Wales, from Cardiff, Manchester, Yorkshire… now, we’re on the verge of losing it.
“In April 2022, we did 48 shoots. This April, we did 27. We’re just not getting the same engagement, because we’re not reaching as many people now.
“We’re not just trying to drum up business for us; we're worried that our previous customers will also fall victim to the same scam. Some of them hadn’t even realised that we’d been hacked.
“We want the page back, and we want to raise awareness of this happening and the damage it’s caused a small business.”
With four members of staff, including Stephen and Lyndsay, SLJ Photography has lost so much business since the hack that Lyndsay is considering a return to working in care.
The couple are also trying to save for their wedding as best they can, trying to look after themselves and their children all the while.
She said: “We haven’t got millions in the bank. We’re working with a skeleton staff at the moment, hours have been cut, and we’re not paying ourselves.
“We have a budget for the wedding, but if things continue, then that budget may have to be cut back.
“Stephen has health conditions which aren’t getting any better, so is very limited on what he can do, and we don’t want to leave it too long to get married.
“Everything was booked for the wedding before all of this happened; deposits have all been paid.”
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Lyndsay said that the course of events has had an “awful” impact on her mental health, having already suffered from depression prior to this.
The stress that the predicament has caused her has left feeling unmotivated to go to the gym, which was previously her coping mechanism for her depression.
She said: “We’re trying to not to cry in front of the kids so that they don’t feel the impact of it, too. We’ve never lived a lavish lifestyle, anyway.”
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Stephen added: “We just want Facebook to help. For them, it’s a case of five minutes of removing the other administrators and re-adding us; that’s it.
“They’ve got all of the power in this but are doing absolutely nothing about it. I apparently owe Facebook $982.21, because of all of the adverts that the hackers have posted.
“We haven’t even had access to the page, though.”
The Journal has contacted Facebook for a response.
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