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Ask HN: My girlfriend is “permanently” locked out of her Facebook account

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Re: Ask HN: My girlfriend is “permanently” locked out of her Facebook account

#11

Post by ficiek »

adnanh wrote: post #7

IANAL but have her email them and ask for all the data they have on her. They should be obliged to comply according to GDPR laws?

This doesn't work with those companies. I once tried to create a Twitter account but unless you provide them your phone number the account just gets blocked straight away. You then have to give them your phone number anyway to unblock it. Since I didn't want to give a random company my phone number I wanted to go to settings and remove the account completely since it was useless and I couldn't even follow people using it. Long story short - the website will not allow you to do that despite GDPR laws. I even filed support tickets to have the account removed and the requests were denied "because the account is inactive", in violation of my laws granted by the GDPR.

Re: Ask HN: My girlfriend is “permanently” locked out of her Facebook account

#12

Post by jhart99 »

adnanh wrote: post #7

IANAL but have her email them and ask for all the data they have on her. They should be obliged to comply according to GDPR laws?

If in California, you can use CCPA to do this as well. But I've found about 25% of companies just delete your info when requesting access and another 25% just don't respond . I'm sure Facebook will respond, but I have no idea how it would work if you can't log in.

Re: Ask HN: My girlfriend is “permanently” locked out of her Facebook account

#13

Post by 8bitsrule »

A 'community' is far more than a collection overseen by a collector. For one thing, it's a place where members value and help one another. Facebook has no idea about community, and will never have 'community' standards. It's too bad anyone trusts it with their valuables.

Re: Ask HN: My girlfriend is “permanently” locked out of her Facebook account

#14

Post by mroche »

I’m in a fun boat where I got my Facebook account completely disabled last July 30 minutes after creating it (made to communicate with fellow interns for a job I just started). I didn’t provide a phone number, and I turned off/toned down every single tracking/anti-security preference they had. I then signed in on my phone’s browser (no way am I installing the app) and that flagged it for suspicious activity, which when I (admittedly very very stupidly) used the same picture as my profile pic for their request, disabled the account.

I have submitted for account recover 7 times by this point with a picture of my license to no success of hearing from the company. And I can’t request for them to delete my license from their servers because lo and behold, you need to sign in to do that!

The best part is that if I trying making a new account/signing in with the same email, it says I can’t do that because the address is associated with an account that is disabled. If I go to the recovery site to submit a request, they claim an account with that email doesn’t exist to be recovered.

At least my Messenger account is separate, but they still have my phone number.

Re: Ask HN: My girlfriend is “permanently” locked out of her Facebook account

#15

Post by dane-pgp »

bryan_w wrote: post #9

1. Buy a oculus or portal product 2. Use the online help to unlock the account Sad to say, that's the only way other than knowing someone who works for these companies :(

If you bought one of those products, could you then return it for a full refund after getting the account unlocked? You might still have to pay for shipping costs, but I imagine that checking and repackaging a product costs Facebook money too.

Perhaps Facebook would lock the account again after processing the returned product, but that should give the user enough time to export any useful data from the account, and to provide alternative contact details to any Facebook-only friends.

Re: Ask HN: My girlfriend is “permanently” locked out of her Facebook account

#16

Post by [deleted] »

unexaminedlife wrote: post #10

I'd be interested to know exactly what internal procedures Facebook goes through before they decide to "permanently" lock someone out of their account. It's probably not a trivial process. A lot of thought and consideration (especially in today's world) is likely going into these decisions. There almost certainly had to be emails sent warning of such violations. I am not on Facebook but would imagine there'd be quite…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: My girlfriend is “permanently” locked out of her Facebook account

#17

Post by ylee »

I would also appreciate suggestions on how to regain my Facebook account, shut down without explanation last year. Despite its age (15 years) I barely used it, let alone for anything "controversial", but did regularly log into it. I repeatedly tried to verify my identity by submitting an image of my driver's license, without any response.

I don't want to create a fake new Facebook account. I want my own back.

Re: Ask HN: My girlfriend is “permanently” locked out of her Facebook account

#19

Post by 010101010101 »

I have a Facebook account that dates back to thefacebook.com and needing a .edu email address to register. About three years ago I decided to use a pseudonym on Facebook. Last year my account was disabled for violating community standards, and when I contacted Facebook, the form letter I got back was that Facebook was unable to verify who the account belongs to, and to reply with a picture of a valid ID. No amount of sending an ID, nor explaining I was using a pseudonym without realizing in it was against ToS, nor asking anyone to look at the 15 years of data associated with the account led to anything other than receiving the same form letter, over and over. On the bright side, it turns out I don’t miss Facebook in the end.

Re: Ask HN: My girlfriend is “permanently” locked out of her Facebook account

#20

Post by troydavis »

mroche wrote: post #14

I’m in a fun boat where I got my Facebook account completely disabled last July 30 minutes after creating it (made to communicate with fellow interns for a job I just started). I didn’t provide a phone number, and I turned off/toned down every single tracking/anti-security preference they had. I then signed in on my phone’s browser (no way am I installing the app) and that flagged it for suspicious activity, which wh…

I had the same thing occur except that the account was disabled immediately after signing up. The post-signup “Welcome!” page was instead a “Your account has been disabled for..” page.

I’m the only user on the IP I signed up from and I’m the only user on the email domain I used.

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