Columbia Gorge Humane Society Social Media Hacked

Members of CGHS first learned of the hack July 1. Seth Bradley, CGHS board member who also has experience as an IT professional, told Columbia Gorge News the hack occurred due to a phishing attack.

According to Oxford Languages, “phishing” is defined as a practice in which criminals fraudulently pose as legitimate companies or businesses through messages such as emails or texts, in an attempt to gain personal information from victims including account passwords, financial details such as credit card or bank account numbers, or even personal identifying information such as social security numbers.

In CGHS’s case, the attack posed as what appeared to be a legitimate email requesting to link their Facebook page with Petfinder — a widely used animal adoption database.

Once the hackers had the information, they took control of the Humane Society’s Facebook account and locked out CGHS. The shelter no longer had access to their main connection to the community and resource for fundraising.

“… Our events that we have coming up, our available pets for adoption, our Amazon Wishlist, our cans and bottles drive, all that stuff that is our lifeline,” Simon said.

According to Bradley, within two hours of the initial attack, he went through the process of reporting the hack to Facebook. The process took a few days, with CGHS eventually being given back access to their page July 5. They immediately removed the hackers from their account.

The only issue? The hackers were left on the CGHS Facebook account’s business manager.

“Our Facebook admin … noticed the hackers … still had full administrative access to our business manager,” Bradley said. “You can actually have your account, but if you don’t have access to your business manager, you can’t do anything.

“We could not kick them out,” Bradley said.

According to Bradley, after multiple attempts to remove the hackers from the account’s business manager, on July 9, CGHS’ Facebook administrator reached back out to Facebook to help rectify the problem. They received a reassurance from Facebook that the process can take time and to try again in two days.

“Well, two days later, guess what happened? The hackers kicked us out of the business manager and back off our page,” Bradley said. He also noted that the hackers also took control of the shelter’s old Home-At-Last Facebook page that CGHS had been utilizing while locked out of their main page. Since that point, CGHS has had zero access to their Facebook pages.

While keeping CGHS from efforts to promote their upcoming fundraisers or provide information on the animals that are actually available for adoption, the hackers have since put up multiple fraudulent advertisements on the CGHS Facebook page advertising animals that are not housed at the shelter, asking for financial deposits to adopt the falsely advertised animals through the app Venmo. According to Simon, at least one person in the community has fallen victim to these fraudulent advertisements.

“They are taking advantage of our citizens in The Dalles,” Simon said.

A 501c3, CGHS is a nonprofit organization that relies solely on donations and other community support to maintain their building and care for the animals housed there. Without access to their Facebook page and the 7.4k followers attached to it to promote their fundraising efforts, Simon fears the shelter will be facing imminent closure.

“Without being able to share information on Facebook, donations and adoptions have been at an all time low. The hackers also removed our Amazon Wishlist on social media so that we are not getting food and other needed donations to keep the 60 dogs and cats that are in our care currently,” Simon said. “This is significantly impacting the livelihood of the shelter.”

Since the ordeal has taken place, CGHS has submitted complaints about hack, both directly to Facebook while also reaching out to both Oregon and California State Attorney Generals (AG) regarding their case. According to Bradley, they were informed by the California AG Office that they were declining to get involved with the case, while the Oregon AG forwarded their complaint to Facebook’s parent company, Meta.

On July 18, CGHS received an email response to their complaint report from Meta Support, claiming their team had not come to a final resolution.

“We will be looking at a long-term fix that will require assistance from several channels and we are closing this case as Done,” the email said. CGHS remains locked out of their accounts.

While CGHS continues to fight their case, the hackers are continuing to post fraudulent advertisements seeking money for animals that are not housed at the shelter.

“The fear is for us in the long run is, when and if we ever do get it back, we are fearing that the people are wavering and they’re going to be unsure about donating because they’re going to be afraid that it’s the hackers again,” Simon said, “It’s crushing us.”

Simon shared she has received messages asking why CGHS doesn’t just close the old account. “Locked out means locked out,” she said. “We would love to, but we can’t.”

While their social media has been affected by the attack, Simon assured Columbia Gorge News that the CGHS website is safe to interact with and submit donations to. They have since opened a GoFundMe page to help recoup the loss of funding that has occurred over the course of the last month. They also created a new Facebook page, which can be found at www.facebook.com/columbiagorgehumane.

“I have some real concerns about how long we can hold on before we have to close the shelter,” Simon told Columbia Gorge News. “The hackers have control of our 8,000- plus followers. They are our lifeline, our donors, our supporters, and our volunteers.”