Putnam County Sheriff’s Office back with new Facebook page

Courtesy Putnam County Sheriff's Office

It took years to build a following of more than 20,000, and who knows how long it may take to rebuild it.

However, after a break of several exasperating days, the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office was back with a new Facebook page as of Sunday afternoon.

A hacker had taken over the old page last week, changing the name, profile and cover pictures and the kind of content the page posts.

On Sunday, though, the department was back with its first post on the new page at www.facebook.com/PCSOSheriff.

“A new day, a new page,” the post opened. “Hopefully we can return to normal.”

What “normal” will look like remains to be seen, as the old page had garnered more than 20,000 followers. Furthermore, posts from Cpl. Scott Ducker, the department’s public information officer, gained not only local attention, but sometimes drew the interest of state or, on occasion, national news sources, partially due to Ducker’s engaging sense of humor.

Either way, though, the page was off to a good start as of Monday afternoon, having grown from zero to 2,000 followers in barely 24 hours.

Ducker tried his best to go through official Facebook channels to recover the lost page, but eventually gave up, finding the tech giant none too helpful.

“We tried to recover the old page, but FB has done NOTHING to assist us in recovering it,” the post read. “It’s almost like some social media platforms aren’t very pro law enforcement.”

The post encourages followers to like the new page and unfollow the old page, as well as following the newly-established PCSO Twitter page at www.twitter.com/PutCoSheriff.

Before signing off with the opening post, Ducker also uses it as an opportunity to educate the public on ways to avoid similar problems on social media.

He notes that he had two-factor authentication with complex password, yet the determined hacker still gained access.

“A few changes have been made to this page to help increase the security, hopefully that helps,” Ducker wrote. “My point is, be extremely careful the information you put on your social media account. Don’t forget that, in the end, it’s not YOUR page. It’s owned by Facebook. We’ve seen firsthand how receptive they are at helping when you get locked out and someone else has full control.”