Battle Creek Field of Flight Quickly Responds To Facebook Hacking

An unfortunate incident on the official Facebook page for Battle Creek's biggest annual event was resolved in a timely manner Thursday evening.

**Disclaimer- to respect those who were affected at Field of Flight by this disturbing incident, we are not sharing any screen shots of the images**

At around 10:00 pm, a rapid series of posts and images appeared on the Battle Creek Field of Flight & Balloon Festival Facebook page that showed a variety offensive material. It included memes and images of Hitler with racist language and nude images, among other disturbing things. An image of Hitler was also uploaded as a profile photo for the page.

Most followers of the page reacted with the awareness that it was obviously some type of hack, and reached out to the Administrators for the page. Within about 30 minutes, all the offensive images had been removed and the profile photo was changed back to the event's logo.

It appears that there was an account that had access to the page that was not supposed to and Field of Flight's Facebook managers were able to locate that account and delete the access. Shortly after they restored the page to its proper form, Field of Flight posted an apology for the incident and explained what had apparently happened. Followers of the page almost unanimously threw support behind them for their quick handling of it and for offering the apology for the hack.

This hack was likely local as local references were made in the posts. Typical Facebook hacks that originate from bots or fake profiles don't go this in-depth and often affect the messages area on the social media platform more than the actual pages themselves.

There is no word on what follow up action might be taken. A comment that was under one of the hacked posts indicated that authorities were notified about it. There's no indication about further investigations at this time. We will pass along any updates, but it appears it was an unfortunate incident that was resolved quickly, thanks to the quick action by the moderators for Field of Flight's social media.

This is a good reminder that if you run a Facebook page for a business or event, always be on guard and make sure there are no accounts that have access that shouldn't. Check often to see what is on your page and keep an eye on any private messages you receive. The same goes for your personal pages as well.

We wish the Battle Creek Field of Flight Air Show & Balloon Festival all the best going forward as they prepare for their 2020 event this summer.