It all started when their business bank account was wrongly charged $1200 for Facebook advertising.

This was followed by Mrs Martin receiving a notification from Telstra that her email account had been hacked, which sounded off alarm bells for the business owners.

Not long after, Mrs Martin was notified her email was suspended due to her allegedly posting child pornography on her Facebook page and as a consequence the couple were logged out of the business Facebook account as it was linked to Mrs Martin's personal account.

"At a time when activity is historically quite slow during February, it really hurt us," Rob Martin said.

"We believe it has had a massive effect on our turnover, we would have lost $5,000 last month.

"It's not just the loss of turnover but also the loss of confidence with members of the community."

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Mrs Martin said the pair attempted to find ways to recover the Facebook account, unfortunately to avail.

"We approached local member Dan Tehan and his office has been sensational although we were unable to help us." she said.

"We tried to get in contact with cyber security, but you can't contact them

"We tried everything we could to recover it, there was a real sense of being powerless."

Mrs Martin said turnover since the fiasco have steadily declined for the small business.

"We have lost thousands of people who have liked our page and used it to see what was happening with the development of the pub," she said.

"We normally use Facebook to reach all of our customers and to take bookings, but we went from 5000 people a week reading our posts to no one.

"We would normally have 40 people at breakfast but since this Facebook problem has popped up maybe only four people turn up."

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Mr Martin said the whole experience has been very difficult to deal with.

"They were pretty big allegations to make and to not be able to answer or even see evidence of the allegation is incredibly frustrating," he said.

"I can't see this changing, I can only see it getting worse.

"It is going to happen again, to other businesses and other people and individuals."

The pair created a new Facebook and website from scratch and decided to let the community know through posting on the Ararat Residents page on Facebook, however they nearly fell victim to another con-artist.

"After putting the post up to say what has happened within two minutes a person came up and was willing to help," Mrs Martin said.

"But then they wanted bitcoin and we realised we were going to be scammed yet again."

Mrs Martin wanted the community to know the dangers associated with social media in the hope other small businesses wouldn't suffer the same fate.

"Everyone should double authenticate their accounts and be very vigilant while online," she said.

"For other businesses out there, don't put all of your marketing into one place, spread the load so you don't lose everything.

"We can't be totally cynical and realise that this is the age we are living in, but just be careful."

To show some support to Barkly Bistro Bar and Accommodation visit:

Phone: (03) 5352 1868

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thebarklyararat/

Website: http://www.thebarklyararat.com.au/

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