29 May 2017

The Facebook Crackdown. Are you willing to lose everything you have posted on Facebook?

Posted in Tech By Jack Cola On May 29, 2017

Facebook was founded in 2005. We are now in 2017. That’s 12 years of status updates, photos, comments, private messages, video’s and hilarious memes that you’ve shared with your closest friends and family.

For some, this could be the memories of your children growing up. For others, this could be those embarrassing status updates you wrote when you were 13. But let me ask you one question right now…

How Would You Feel If Facebook Deleted Your Account Right Now?

All those pictures, all those memories, all those stories? Gone, lost, deleted and never accessible again? No more “On This Day” memories, no more reminiscing of what you did 10 years ago.

How do feel about this?

Well, I will be in shock, heartbroken, and like I’ve been stabbed in the chest! Just like how I felt (and other people feel) when they lose data from a failed hard drive.

What about if you use Facebook as storage for all your photo’s, and you don’t have them on your computer as it previously died, and then Facebook goes ahead and just deletes your account without warning?

Your Facebook account deleted – at any moment, without warning

Let me tell you something…

This happened to me… and only last week.

One of the many Facebook’s policy is that your name on Facebook must be your real name.

We require everyone to use the name that they use in everyday life – what their friends call them – on Facebook. Learn more about our name policies.

This is the message you get when you use a fake last name when signing up to Facebook. In this example, I entered “Jack Action”.

I go by the name Jack Cola, and if you haven’t guessed it yet, that’s not my real last name. What’s scary is, that one morning, I woke up, and was logged out of Facebook and Messenger on all my devices. I logged back in, and was presented with a “Security Checkpoint” stating that my account may have been accessed by a third party and that I was to provide my date of birth and upload a photo of me. This was weird, because I have setup up Login Notification emails and I didn’t receive any email from Facebook to say that someone was logging into my account.

Luckily, by providing this information, I was able to gain access to my accounts. However, in the meantime, all my messages to my friends disappeared with a message saying, “This message is marked as spam and cannot be shown”. That’s a great message for anyone trying to message you!

So, I was lucky that I was able to access my main account. However, the account that I use for work and to manage clients Facebook pages wasn’t so lucky as it was also disabled at the same time.

I can’t access it.

It has been disabled.

The downside is that the ID I upload doesn’t pass Facebook’s identify review as the date of birth is different, and my name is different.

I should also mention, it’s also against Facebook to have multiple Facebook accounts. But wait a second there Facebook, maybe I want to separate my work and life?

I don’t want my work to access my private Facebook account and knowing my password.

I don’t want to provide analytical apps such as Hootsuite access to all my private status updates and messages.

I want to keep that all separate, thus the additional Facebook account.

It’s Gone. Simple. Never accessible

Fortunately, the pages I managed had multiple admin’s so nothing was lost.

However, what I did lose, was my entire business with Sadly Unfriended – the website I built in 2013 that tells you who unfriended you on Facebook. I now have to either rebuild or refund all my customers that have paid a yearly subscription.

Because Facebook doesn’t like the idea of their customers knowing who unfriended them on Facebook… even though I use the Facebook Graph API to work it out, they deleted ALL my Facebook Apps I have created. That includes the outdated Jack Cola’s Freebies, and the auto-post to Facebook I have for another website of mine.

I’ve been temporarily banned as a Facebook Developer – without warning. I can’t access any apps, and I can no longer create any new Facebook Applications.

This is why, I want to ask you the question How Would You Feel If Facebook Deleted Your Account Right Now?

What you can do about it?

1) Download your Facebook Account

Thankfully, you can download your Facebook account to your computer. This includes your photo’s, video’s, status updates and messages.

Unfortunately, it’s not presented the same way as it is on Facebook.com, but at least you have your memories safe on your computer.

So, for anyone who read this far (or skipped to the bottom), if there is anything I want you to do now is to Download Your Facebook Profile right now.

2) Don’t Use Facebook As Your Primary Storage

From now on, make sure you always have a backup of the information you upload to Facebook. You don’t want Facebook to be your only copy!

Don’t run the risk and think Facebook will keep your account forever, they just may delete it unexpectedly.

It Can Happen to Anyone

If you are thinking this is a unique circumstance, think again as it hasn’t just happened to me. There are other reported cases of people losing access to their Facebook account: