How to Secure (and Recover) Your Business Social Media and Google Business Profile

Your Storefront That Nobody Is Guarding

Most small business security effort goes toward email, financial systems, and customer data — and for good reason. But your business’s social media pages and Google Business Profile are also a real asset, often with real financial exposure attached (ad spend, linked payment methods, customer trust), and they’re frequently secured with far less rigor than anything else in the business. A single admin using a personal login with no MFA, no documented recovery path, and no one else with backup access is a common setup — and it’s exactly the setup that turns a hijacked account into a weeks-long, sometimes unrecoverable, ownership dispute with a platform that has no phone number to call.

This guide covers how to properly structure ownership and access for Facebook Business Manager, LinkedIn Company Pages, and Google Business Profile, and what to actually do if one gets hijacked.

Why These Accounts Get Hijacked

Business social media and Google Business Profile accounts are attractive, low-effort targets for a few specific reasons:

• They’re often protected by weaker security than core business systems — a personal password with no MFA is common, especially on accounts set up early in the business’s life and never revisited.
• Compromised credentials from an infostealer or data breach frequently include social media logins, since business owners often reuse or lightly vary passwords across personal and business platforms — see our guide on infostealer malware for how these credentials end up for sale in the first place.
• A hijacked business page has direct monetization value to an attacker — running fraudulent ads charged to your linked payment method, redirecting your page to a scam storefront, or selling access to your follower base and page history.
• Google Business Profile hijacking is a distinct, well-documented scam where an attacker requests ownership transfer or submits a fraudulent business verification, sometimes redirecting your listed phone number or website to a competitor or scam operation — and it can happen without ever compromising your actual Google account password.

Getting Ownership and Access Structured Correctly

Facebook Business Manager

• Never run business pages from a personal Facebook profile alone. Set up Meta Business Manager as the actual owner of the business’s Page and ad accounts, with individual employees granted role-based access rather than shared login credentials.
• Assign at least two admins, not one — a single-admin setup means the business loses all control if that one person leaves, loses access, or is compromised.
• Enforce MFA on every admin account — see our comparison of two-factor vs. multi-factor authentication if you’re deciding which method to require — and review the admin and partner access list quarterly to remove anyone who no longer needs it (a departed employee or a former agency partner, for example).
• Set spending limits on connected ad accounts so a compromised account can’t run unlimited fraudulent ad spend before you notice.

LinkedIn Company Pages

• Assign Page admin roles to at least two people through LinkedIn’s Page admin tools, rather than relying on one person’s personal LinkedIn login controlling the page.
• Enable MFA on every admin’s personal LinkedIn account, since Company Page access is tied to the admin’s individual account security.

Google Business Profile

• Add a second owner or manager to your Google Business Profile through the platform’s own user-management settings — this is the single most important step, since sole-owner listings are the hardest to recover if that one account is compromised or lost.
• Enable MFA on the Google account that owns the listing, and use a unique password managed through a real password manager rather than one reused from a personal account.
• Monitor for unauthorized edit requests — Google notifies the listed owner of certain changes, but review your listing’s actual live details (phone number, website, hours, address) periodically rather than assuming no notification means no changes occurred.
• Verify your business with a real, monitored phone number or address, since verification method disputes are a common friction point in ownership-recovery cases.

Recovering a Hijacked Account

If a business social media or Google Business Profile account is compromised or an ownership dispute arises, speed and documentation both matter, because platform support processes for business accounts are notoriously slow and largely self-service, with no phone number to call in most cases.

1. Attempt password reset and account recovery through the platform’s official recovery flow immediately — on Facebook and Google specifically, delay meaningfully reduces the odds of a successful self-service recovery, since attackers often move quickly to remove other admins and change recovery contact information.
2. Check for and immediately report to the platform any changes an attacker made — removed admins, added new admins, changed payment methods, or edited business information.
3. Use the platform’s dedicated business/hijacked-account reporting form, not the general support contact form — Meta, Google, and LinkedIn all have specific escalation paths for compromised business accounts that move faster than general support tickets.
4. Gather ownership proof in advance of needing it — a domain-verified business email, business registration documents, and any original account-creation records substantially speed up a platform’s manual review when self-service recovery fails.
5. Alert your audience through an alternate channel (your website, email list, or a co-admin’s personal account) if the hijacked account is being used to post scam content or run fraudulent promotions, so customers aren’t misled while recovery is in progress.
6. Once recovered, audit and remove all attacker-added access — admins, connected apps, ad accounts, and payment methods — before considering the incident closed. If the same credentials were reused anywhere else in the business, treat this as a broader incident and follow the containment steps in our guide on recovering a hacked business email account.

Watch for Recovery Scams

A predictable secondary scam has emerged around hijacked business accounts: after a real hijacking, victims searching for help are targeted by fake “account recovery services” promising fast restoration for a fee, or by scammers posing as platform support offering to help in exchange for login credentials or payment. Legitimate platforms do not charge a fee to recover your own account, and do not proactively reach out offering recovery help — any unsolicited recovery offer following a hijacking should be treated as a second attack, not a lifeline. If you’re not sure whether your business’s credentials have already surfaced somewhere they shouldn’t, our guide on dark web monitoring for small business covers how to check.

Bottom Line

Business social media and Google Business Profile accounts carry real financial and reputational exposure but are routinely secured with less rigor than any other business system. Fix that with the same basics that protect everything else — multiple admins instead of one, MFA on every admin account, regular access reviews, and ownership documentation prepared before you need it — and know the platform-specific recovery path in advance, since the time to learn it is not during an active hijacking.