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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

#111

Post by tokenizerrr »

ufmace wrote: post #110
tokenizerrr wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They assume their automated system can catch evil users in the act. It couldn't. It failed it's job and let the attacker do what they wanted while preventing the legitimate user from controlling their account. So the automated system did more harm than good. It should either be overhauled or disabled.

It did that, in this one particular case. Facebook has what, hundreds of millions of users, maybe billions? No system anybody can come up with can handle every case that every one of those users will have perfectly. They have something that their experience leads them to believe is at least pretty good for most cases. They're not going to change it because it did the wrong thing for one guy. They don't even know righ…

By controlling the email account that was used to sign up. This is standard practise and quite simple.

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

#112

Post by adam12 »

Velox wrote: 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)

> What would the alternative be?

Not to re-activate an old account without email re-verification.

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

#114

Post by Ajedi32 »

tech2 wrote: post #71
crottypeter wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frustrate returning customers ... not a great idea

You're not the customer, you're the product.

In practice that's not really a meaningful distinction. For a business that survives by selling ads, pissing off your users is just as bad as pissing off your advertisers; you need both to survive, not just one or the other.

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

#115

Post by cwyers »

llukas wrote: post #60
wodenokoto wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course you should. Else anybody can close accounts that have been purposely reopened.

No. Instead of reopening account on a whim require id when account is being reopened.

They did require a form of identification -- the user's password. The user was careless, and so that password ended up being compromised. This is exactly the same as any other scenario where a user's password has been compromised -- they need to prove they're the legitimate user, not whoever has the compromised password.

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

#116

Post by nommm-nommm »

Sir_Substance wrote: post #48
crottypeter wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When I was 20 I'd tend to agree with you. Now well into my 30s I don't. I don't remember a ton of stuff anymore you think I would, including signing up for services.

Plus you have to trust the user thinks everything through and associates "I don't want Facebook anymore for its primary purpose" with "I use Facebook for other things too."

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

#117

Post by jmcdiesel »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #107
tedunangst wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if you give somebody your facebook password and they reactivate your account, shouldn't you be angry with that somebody?

Where did i say I gave someone my password? I said it just got re-activated automatically without me knowing. No one else other than me knows the password. And I never got a notice. I am angry at you.

FB doesn't just randomly reactivate accounts... If your account comes back, it was probably compromised. Spammers and scammers look for deactivated accounts because i will be longer until they are discovered...

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

#118

Post by jmcdiesel »

SippinLean wrote: post #109
Velox wrote: 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)

>Allow anyone to request that an account is deleted? "anyone" with the proper access credentials?

When said credentials have been leaked elsewhere, they aren't "proper" anymore.

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

#119

Post by tjoff »

cwyers wrote: post #115
llukas wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Instead of reopening account on a whim require id when account is being reopened.

They did require a form of identification -- the user's password. The user was careless, and so that password ended up being compromised. This is exactly the same as any other scenario where a user's password has been compromised -- they need to prove they're the legitimate user, not whoever has the compromised password.

And the only proper way to do that identification is to go through the registered mail.

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

#120

Post by awinter-py »

Does anybody have conversion stats for the facebook signup process? What's the dropoff rate when it wants to scan your driver's license? Do they do this in every country? Do they do it on mobile?

I'm more disturbed by 5 year data retention than the crappy verification step.

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