UNFACEBOOKED!!
One afternoon a few weeks ago I received an email asking if I’d changed my Facebook password.
Nope, I hadn’t. With a growing sense of dread, I opened Facebook and logged in. Or tried to. My efforts were thwarted with the ominous message:
ACCOUNT DISABLED.
What did that even mean? It sounded a lot worse than merely having my account limited or suspended. A quick Google search informed me that; ‘Facebook may disable your account if you’ve used it in a way that violates their terms and standards. This includes using a fake name, impersonating someone, sending spam messages, and harassing other users.’
I couldn’t remember doing any of those things. Who has time for that? If I could impersonate anyone, I’d impersonate myself so I could be in two places at once. It was all I could do to keep up with the cat videos.
After some more online sleuthing I was able to piece together what most likely happened. Someone used my email address to try to log into my Facebook, knowing they would be unsuccessful and would need a code sent to my email to reset the password. This means they must have somehow gained access to my Hotmail account. That was the most invasive part of all. It wasn’t just the idea that some stranger, or strangers, or bot, or some evil AI creation, had been rifling through my private correspondence (which isn’t that exciting, to be honest). I was more concerned about all the transactions I’ve made via email. There are receipts, invoices, warranty agreements, and bank details galore. Everything someone so inclined would need to rob me blind. When the hacker was in possession of the magic code, they used it to reset my Facebook password and locked me out. Whatever happened next Facebook didn’t approve of and disabled my account. I hope it wasn’t anything too terrible. I haven’t heard from the police yet, so that’s a plus.
It didn’t really matter how or why this happened. But now it had, I had to deal with it. Switching to damage limitation mode, I logged out of Hotmail and reset the password. Then I hurriedly checked my online banking app. Thankfully, there was no unusual acvtivity. I could still log into Twitter, Whatsapp, LinkedIn, WordPress, and eBay, so the attack hadn’t penetrated that far. Never-the-less I kept a close eye on things for the next few days. It appeared I’d gotten off relatively lightly, but being denied access to Facebook was a blow. My profile had thousands of contacts, some of whom I’d been chatting to for years and only knew on FB. There were exes and crushes, old friends and former colleagues, not to mention hundreds of photos. Almost every step of my last fifteen years has been meticulously chronicled. Facebook wasn’t just my address book, but my diary, too. The attack had also left messenger and business page out of commission.
The interwebs said that when Facebook disables an accounts in this manner, it sends the registered user an email outlining the appeal process. I didn’t receive an email, so had no recourse. I tried to contact customer support, but anyone who has ever tried to do this will know it is virtually impossible. You just get caught in a loop. I did find an email address that other people with the same problem has contacted. I wrote to it, and waited. There was no reply.
At first, not having Facebook was just inconvenient. Even a bit of a novelty. But a few days in I found myself habitually picking up my phone several times a day, or several times an hour, and attempting to log in because I really needed to know what that woman I worked with eight years ago had for lunch, or what John from Bath thought of the latest Doctor Who episode.
ACCOUNT DISABLED.
Then I would forget, and and a couple of hours later whip out my phone and try to message one of my pool mates to see we had a match.
ACCOUNT DISABLED.
Did I have Steve’s phone number saved? It’s surprising how little I have used my phone to actually call people in recent years, and scrolling through my list of contacts feels clunky and odd. There are three Steves in my phone. Steve, Steve 2, and Steve S. Which, if any, is the right Steve? Should I call one of them? What do I say? If I know them I’d have to have some kind of conversation. A procession of Steves run through my mind. Every Steve I’ve ever known. I look at my text history to see if I can gather any clues. That’s another world I haven’t delved into for a while. I can’t even remember the last SMS I sent.
What am I doing? I’ll just message Steve on Facebook messenger like I always do.
ACCOUNT DISABLED.
Oh yeah.
Forgot about that.
Even after doing it fifty times, I would still feel a jolt of confusion, then an achingly familiar sense of disappointment as my mind again retraced the sequence of events that had led me to that point. I sent another email to the email address I’d written to before. A longer and more detailed one, which I saved on my computer so I could send it again. And I did. I send it every couple of days. Now, I’m into double figures. They still haven’t replied.
There can be no denying the first few evenings were difficult. I felt like that teenager who couldn’t go to the disco. Any upheaval upsets your life balance, then you get used to it. Us humans are a resilient lot. It dawned on me how much time I was saving. My phone very kindly informs me every week of how much time I spend scrolling, and apparently I’d used it over seven hours less than the week before. Was all that Facebook time? It must be. That was the only thing that had changed. Seven hours a week was the equivalent of a part time job. For an hour a day I was soaking up ads and arguing with people I didn’t know about things I didn’t care about. If I was lucky. Interaction has dropped off a cliff on Facebook in the past few years. Most of the time you are just scrolling. Or, more accurately, consuming content. Now, I just consume content elsewhere. It isn’t difficult. I use news sites more, and those dedicated to things I spent over an hour a day looking for on Facebook.
And I am all over my email. The moment something lands in my inbox and I get that notification I spring into action. It must be the a replacement for the endorphine hit you supposedly get when you get a Facebook ‘like.’ It remains to be seen whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, but at least there’s no build-up in my inbox. That was where all the most important stuff always went, any way.
I’m not alone in this. My sleuthing tells me security breaches and subsequent shut-outs such as the one I experienced are a growing problem. It’s so common it probably deserves it’s own name, so I’m going to go out on a limb here and give it one. Unfacebooked.
I’ve been unfacebooked.
It can only be a matter of time before the term enters the common vernacular. Our increasing reliance on technology means things like this are only probably going toto be expected. Modern life is rubbish, and all that. But it does make me wonder how alert to the issue Meta are. I should be grateful to them for acting so quickly and disabling my account before any real harm could be done, but making themselves virtually uncontactable is counterproductive and frustrating in the extreme. You would think a company that raked in more than $134bn in in 2023 would have better customer service.
And still my emails went unanswered. It seems the only way to resolve the issue is to pay £9.99 to be verified on instagram, which is also owned by Meta. This gives you access to an actual human via its help centre. I explained the situation, was given a case number, and assured they were looking ointo it. So is this a cash grab or just massively inconvenient?
Whatever the case, I’ve heard nothing in over a week. I’ve already decided to cancel the next payment to Meta, whatever happens. The mere thought of starting a new Facebook account is daunting. In fact, I might not even bother. Who is to say I somehow manage to rebuild my contacts and connections only for this to happen again? Maybe I will feel differently when the dust settles. But right now, I’m just enjoying the extra seven hours a week. To make sure the same thing doesn’t happen to you, though, don’t rely on Facebook.
