Facebook has made a few questionable decisions over the years, both internally in terms of management as well as relating to the platform’s algorithm and features. Well, it seems that Meta’s popular social media platform is at it again, this time by reportedly locking out users who doesn’t activate Facebook Protect out of their Facebook accounts.
Worse, some users are even saying that they weren’t made aware of the necessity of turning on Facebook Protect. In fact, the only notice they got was from a spam-like email from Facebook titled “Your account requires advanced security from Facebook Protect”.
Before delving any further, what is Facebook Protect actually? Well, according to Facebook, it is a “security program for groups of people that are more likely to be targeted by malicious hackers, such as human rights defenders, journalists, and government officials,”.
In simpler terms and as its name would suggest, the feature is to ensure protection against hacking threats and to protect users’ accounts using two-factor authentication. Furthermore, Facebook told users via the email that they would be locked out of their account if they don’t turn on Facebook Protect, which can be done through a link in the email.
Ironically enough, the email used by Facebook to ask users to activate Facebook Protect doesn’t look particularly safe as ‘[email protected]’ looks like a phishing site rather than an official email address. Well, many thought the email was indeed spam and ignored it. As it turns out, the email was in fact, real and a lot of users were locked out of their account for not activating Facebook Protect through the email. Yikes!
According to a report by The Verge, several users have already been locked out of their Facebook accounts due to ignoring the email. These users voiced out their dissatisfaction to Facebook via Twitter (well, since they got locked out of Facebook), such as Olivia_Thiessen in the screenshot below:
The Verge has since updated its report with a statement by Facebook. The company said that they are currently looking into ‘isolated examples’ of people who were locked out of their accounts and may need help to enrol in Facebook Protect.
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