Help : Facebook Support Is Useless
I haven't been on Facebook for more than a year now. For some reason, today, I decided to send some messages and lo and behold my password wouldn't work. I am reasonably confident that I have not forgotten the password. After a few tries, I did what any sane person would do - hit the 'forget password' workflow. OK, I got the recovery code and all and was able to reset and log in. And this is where things got a bit weird.
Facebook dropped me onto a completely new profile. The email message I got subsequently said that they have "reactivated an old account". What is even weirder is that the two email addresses differ by a "dot". (Thank you gmail!) Anyone who uses gmail would know that dots don't matter in the address. So, if my original email, to which my OG account was linked was '[email protected]'; the new account has been created as '[email protected]' - and no I did enter the dotted email as the recovery email. It doesn't seem to matter for facebook recovery process. The email I get is being sent to the one without dots and that email is linked to the new account now. This new account is now showing up for even the dotted email (If I try the forget password flow wherein it shows 'is this your account?')
I checked my OG profile and it does exist. Fortunately, I have one session still active for my OG account on chrome that I hadn't opened in a long time. I tried checking what email was listed on the account. It is blank! I never gave my phone # to facebook. So, I have a situation wherein my OG account seems to have no email and no phone number on it. And any attempt to add those is asking for the old password - which is not working! I am kinda stuck!
I reported the new account as 'fake'; 'impersonating me' as there seemed to be no other option in facebook support to address this issue. Despite clearly indicating that it is an impersonation of me, facebook auto support says 'no community guidelines have been violated' and everything is kosher!
Well, no, it is not!
I am half inclined to just use this as a sign from powers above, and start deleting my photos etc. from the OG session I still have access to; and then deactivate both the accounts for good - but was hoping I could fix it first. Does anyone have any real human contacts in Facebook who could help?
HN is starting to become an unofficial customer support forum for derelict big-tech businesses. We regularly see messages like this "hoping to contact someone", as a desperate last resort in case developers hang out here.
If I were a big-tech employee reading HN I'd feel ashamed of this.
Designated employees would monitor some forums and quietly raise PRs internally.
Not yet. Fortunately, Farmconomy 3.0 is coming.
Eventually it justworked. Months later. Sorry man. Nothing useful to add.
Not an issue. Thank you for your response.
On the other hand, it might be useful to start a new tag `Help HN:`, to get support from the bigtechs since this seems to truly be the last resort
Emails to [email protected] are sent to [email protected]? The other way round?
If [email protected] exists, a new account for [email protected] can‘t be made?
Assuming one John Smith creates an account as [email protected] ; and then another John Smith happens to create an account as [email protected] - and doesn't confirm the email right away (either the site doesn't ask for it; or doesn't really block any functionality - just keeps showing an annoying warning message). First John Smith can now easily take over the second account by triggering a change password flow - for shit and giggles.
https://lifehacker.com/your-gmail-account-has-unlimited-addr...
P.S. I did start off with [Help HN] in the subject; but for some reason that was auto removed by HN. So `[Help HN] text` became just `text`. I eventually edited the subject to at least put in `Help` there.
Anyway, I had a business account on Facebook. I was paying them for page reach and they still flagged my pages as 'not following community guidelines'. After a year, the situation remained the same. My pages were still flagged yellow for no reason at all!
It's better to just leave Facebook and delete your accounts than to deal with it because in all fairness, you just can't deal with it.
On a different note, I can survive not being on Facebook, but I often dread what would happen if I were ever to lose access to my gmai? The aftermath would be a massive, massive pain in the wrong place..
How did we end up with our identities so entrenched with just a few corporate entities? I wish things were easy to switch
Yeah, that's why I've been moving to ProtonMail. My Gmail is full of spam now anyway but I do fear for the services that are connected to my Google Account, it's going to be a massive pain to move away from every single service I've used with Google Login.