Iron North Studio owner loses 11 years of social media in minutes after account hack

Jenna Ladd was at Saunders Farm with family on Thanksgiving Monday when her fitness studio's social media presence was wiped out. In just 23 minutes — between 11:05 a.m. and 11:28 a.m. — hackers deleted all four accounts: her personal Facebook, Iron North Studio's Facebook page, her personal Instagram, and the studio's Instagram account. Eleven years of marketing history, gone.

Ladd first received a WhatsApp notification of suspicious activity on her Facebook account, but didn't take it seriously and put her phone away. Meta then sent notifications about suspicious activity on both Facebook and Instagram. By the time she checked in, she had been removed as manager of the fitness studio's Meta business suite. Both accounts were suspended for violating terms of service; her appeal was rejected one minute after the suspension.

She tried every avenue to reach Meta support over the past week but hit a wall: without access to the deleted accounts, she couldn't log in to pursue recovery options. Meta's support system routed her through AI chatbots "in continuous circles," she said.

Ladd described the loss as "a digital house fire." She told a reporter: "One minute everything is standing and fine, and you feel safe, and then you turn around and everything has burned down with no chance of support." What remains is a much smaller email list of clients — not nearly enough to sustain her business.

The timing could not be worse. Iron North's budget relies on social media-driven promotions for the last three months of the year. "To be cut off is more than just cutting off your legs — it's just disappearing you," Ladd said. "If they don't happen, I don't know what we're going to do."

Meta has not responded to inquiries about this incident. It is unclear whether the account was actually compromised or deleted by Meta for other reasons.