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Facebook activated my dormant account and won’t let me deactivate it

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Re: Facebook activated my dormant account and won’t let me deactivate it

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author clearly has access to the email account associated with the account. I don't see why they demand identification when they can just send a verification email, like literally every other website. What facebook is doing would make sense for a bank. They're not a bank. I know they think they are super duper important, but they're just another website that has no business demanding anyone's ID. Can you imagine…

For many third-party websites your facebook account is your identity, i.e. they are super duper important.

This is primarily why I'm a little torn about the "just send an auth" - Facebook, whether we like it or not, has wedged itself into a huge number of websites far beyond just the facebook domain. Surrendering control of a facebook account doesn't just let you mess with someone's social profile, it's potentially access to store accounts and much more. Whether or not people should be doing this is sort of irrelevant as the damage is already done and the situation is already entangled in Facebook's federated login.

Re: Facebook activated my dormant account and won’t let me deactivate it

#42

It may not be Facebook themselves that caused the account reactivation. I'm was very recently in a similar situation having a Facebook account that was deactivated about 5 years ago (I thought I had deleted it). I received the exact same account reactivation notification email as in the article and I also started receiving photo post notification emails. Upon attempting to sign in to my Facebook account to investigat…

> I suspect that account credentials acquired from breaches of non-Facebook services are being used to attempt to access Facebook accounts. Given you more or less gave away the idea that you reuse your own passwords, if you haven't already, I suggest you start using a password manager and changing all your passwords to something random.

They did mention it was 5 years ago; password managers have become a lot more popular in that time.

Re: Facebook activated my dormant account and won’t let me deactivate it

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author clearly has access to the email account associated with the account. I don't see why they demand identification when they can just send a verification email, like literally every other website. What facebook is doing would make sense for a bank. They're not a bank. I know they think they are super duper important, but they're just another website that has no business demanding anyone's ID. Can you imagine…

For many third-party websites your facebook account is your identity, i.e. they are super duper important.

Which in turn is just delegated to an email address + password combination. If the user controls that email, they obviously should control the facebook account, and everything else connected to it.

Re: Facebook activated my dormant account and won’t let me deactivate it

#44

It may not be Facebook themselves that caused the account reactivation. I'm was very recently in a similar situation having a Facebook account that was deactivated about 5 years ago (I thought I had deleted it). I received the exact same account reactivation notification email as in the article and I also started receiving photo post notification emails. Upon attempting to sign in to my Facebook account to investigat…

> I suspect that account credentials acquired from breaches of non-Facebook services are being used to attempt to access Facebook accounts. Given you more or less gave away the idea that you reuse your own passwords, if you haven't already, I suggest you start using a password manager and changing all your passwords to something random.

I certainly didn't manage passwords very well years ago.

I've been using a password manager for some time now.

Re: Facebook activated my dormant account and won’t let me deactivate it

#47

> I am concerned that they knew that I used this password on several different sites. How did they know that? I suppose they keep an automated list of passwords that have been hacked on other sites, when those hacked passwords are made public? If so, that much is reasonable. A clear demonstration of how users don't read error messages, as the screenshot that appears above this paragraph spells out the exact method th…

and at the bottom of the page:

> You can also try other challenges to confirm your identity.

Re: Facebook activated my dormant account and won’t let me deactivate it

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author clearly has access to the email account associated with the account. I don't see why they demand identification when they can just send a verification email, like literally every other website. What facebook is doing would make sense for a bank. They're not a bank. I know they think they are super duper important, but they're just another website that has no business demanding anyone's ID. Can you imagine…

For many third-party websites your facebook account is your identity, i.e. they are super duper important.

>For many third-party websites your facebook account is your identity, i.e. they are super duper important.

Correction, for many third party websites a facebook account is /an/ identity. If you closed your facebook account, what are the odds you're going to be using it as your openID login all over the place?

Probably none.

Re: Facebook activated my dormant account and won’t let me deactivate it

#49

> I am concerned that they knew that I used this password on several different sites. How did they know that? I suppose they keep an automated list of passwords that have been hacked on other sites, when those hacked passwords are made public? If so, that much is reasonable. A clear demonstration of how users don't read error messages, as the screenshot that appears above this paragraph spells out the exact method th…

and at the bottom of the page: > You can also try other challenges to confirm your identity.

The identity challenge does not matter: you shouldn't have to confirm your identity to protest against the reactivation of an account you intended to close. The point still stands: OP intended to close their account in 2012, and are now being signed up again without their consent.

Re: Facebook activated my dormant account and won’t let me deactivate it

#50
post #3

What would the alternative be? Allow anyone to request that an account is deleted? Facebook needs some form of verification due to the password being breached (and its great that they are checking for that sort of thing)

The alternative would have been for Facebook to close the account in 2012, as the user wanted.
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