Serious security flaws?
With millions of people around the globe using Facebook, it is no doubt on of the top social media sites ever. The company improves each feature continuously. But based on my very recent experience, the site’s security policy has its flaws.
I made my Facebook account last August 2017. I am a very private person so I keep everything that I post private or what we call “friends only”. The only thing which is public is my cover photo which I often hide from my timeline as well.
The problem started when my account was hacked. Yes, someone guessed my password and made nasty fun using my account.
I was able to retrieve it since I already got it linked to my Gmail account and I changed the password. I even added extra security which is the two-factor authentication. This feature lets you receive a code whenever your account was accessed from a different or unfamiliar device.
A few days later, we found a profile which used my name and my picture. The account didn’t have any posts at all except for the profile picture. My friend was the one who saw it first so he reported it as pretending to be me.
I received the notification from the Support inbox after a while.
The next day, I was waiting for a very important message (I use Facebook as my number 1 way for communication since it’s easier for my friends and clients to use it), when suddenly my account was logged out.
Thinking that it was just a bug, I tried to login again. But alas! My account was disabled for pretending to be someone else!
I got so frustrated because I was about to miss an important Messenger call from a client.
Facebook has the option to send your IDs in order to prove that you are the real owner. I did send it hoping to recover my account ASAP.
The flaw? Facebook didn’t even check their database that my account is way older than the account that they chose to keep open. They didn’t check that the “fake account” didn’t have any posts or friends and that it was only less than a week old. They didn’t make sure which account was authentic.
It took so long for them to review my IDs so I made a new Facebook account just to be able to contact my client. But after a few minutes of creating a new account, it got disabled again and the company asked for my picture for verification which I also did.
After an hour of waiting, there was still no response so I made another one. The same thing happened — it needed verification.
Because of this, I lost a very big deal from the said client. It’s a big downfall for me I might add.
I kept on messaging Facebook to no avail.
I was only able to recover my account after a few days. But it won’t bring back the things that I lost.
And by the way, the accounts which needed to be verified? There is no response from the Support team until now.
I suggest that Facebook add a Live Chat Service for these kinds of problems. And please check your database very carefully to avoid inconvenience. Small things for companies like Facebook can be big things for ordinary people like me.
