Facebook Account Disabled, Fifteen Years Vanished Instantly
Facebook Disabled My Account, Fifteen Years Vanished in 2 hours.
I was working on a document when a strange window flashed up on my screen. I barely looked at it, assumed it was an email, closed it, and carried on. Two minutes later, an email from Facebook arrived with an 8‑digit login code. It said to ignore it if I didn’t request it, so I did. Another code arrived a couple of minutes later. Again, ignored.
Ninety minutes after that, I tried to log in to Facebook and was met with a blunt message: your account has been disabled. I submitted the appeal they offered, only to be told it was rejected and I couldn’t appeal again. Just like that, fifteen years of posts, photos, memories, and admin access to church pages, missionary pages, a narrowboat adventurer page and as an admin for a charity providing aid to Nicaragua, Romania and the Philippines were gone.
That was the moment I finally understood the phrase “sick to my stomach”. The panic was instant. I spent hours trying to find any way to reach a real human being at Facebook. Eventually, I found the option to download my data. Two hours later, I had a 600MB zip file containing everything Facebook had ever collected about me, every click, message, photo, and mention.
Buried in the login logs was the smoking gun. Around the time that pop‑up appeared, someone on a Windows PC using an AT&T connection accessed my account. I’m on a Mac, on EE/BT. They even added a “Jxxxxx Fxxxx” to my friends list.
Whatever they posted, either on my profile or somewhere else under my name triggered Facebook’s automated systems. A bot decided I’d broken the Guidelines and disabled the account instantly. No human review. No conversation. No second chance.
Fifteen years erased by automation. All it would take for a human, would be to look at 15 years of posts and comments to see 'It was not me' who posted whatever it was that decided my account should be 'Disabled'. I post squirrels, caravan holidays, birds on feeders and rain storms in summer!
And I’m far from alone. A quick search shows thousands of people in the same situation, with only a tiny percentage of around 3% ever getting their accounts restored.
My daughter did find one “solution”, buy a Meta VR headset, because apparently that’s the only way to speak to a real human at Meta. Make of that what you will.
PS. The following day, he / she / whoever tried to access my eBay account, by then I'd changed virtually all my passwords and where possible added Passkeys.
PPS. I was due to fly out to the Philippines in early July to video, photograph and document daily on Facebook the building of a kindergarten and for the distribution of aid for the charity I'm (was!) a Facebook admin for - That has now had to be cancelled - so thank you whoever you were, I hope it was worth it for you.
