Goodbye Facebook?

We've all had the occasional issue with Facebook. Forgotten passwords, locked accounts, etc. But eventually it gets fixed - not always thanks to Facebook. As most social media platforms, Facebook is crucial to our author work. It's a way to get in touch with readers, to post our thoughts, to make a mark out there in the WWW. What happens when that access is completely blocked? Worse, when there is no help given? You're stuck. Cue my story... I have logged on to my fb account from various servers - at work, home, off my cellphone. At some point, Facebook must have bugged me to enter my phone number to recover the account if ever needed and I stupidly broke my own rule and gave them the number. Recently, that number was changed. And for whatever reason my account was flagged as requiring a security code.... you guessed it: which was sent to my old phone number.

Of course, I tried everything. Even clicking on the bottom link that says "I'm having trouble with this step" All it does is bring me to a useless FAQ page (see below). I have read most of those questions and answers, and no help.

I went on google. Did a search for "facebook locked me out of my own account". You'd be surprised at the number of forums inundated with issues like mine. To name a few: https://m.facebook.com/help/community/question/?id=945968702166501 Facebook's advice: https://m.facebook.com/help/117450615006715?helpref=related

Notice how the advice is useless, given the situation? I tried searching for their contact... no luck. Because of course, why would a corporation like FB have a call centre, and actually make their number available to the masses? Waste of time. I went on twitter and tweeted @Facebook AND @FB _HelpTeam No answer. More research online brought more results of people having the same issue. https://m.facebook.com/help/community/question/?id=1375971305971089

This particular one gives a solution that I tried. Resetting password... to no avail. Once I reset the password and went to log in with the new one, despite cleaning out my web history, it still gave me the security code error. Another common issue that seems to happen: https://www.google.ca/amp/digitalmediaglobe.com/my-facebook-account-temporarily-locked-how-to-unlock/amp/ It's amazing in today's world, this kind of stuff happens. After hours of researching I did find the following links promising a solution by filling in a magical form. 

https://m.face book.com/help/community/question/?id=10200873217697450 https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-verify-my-Facebook-account-and-send-the-code-to-my-new-phone-number Problem is the steps all lead to a broken link. When I googled that same form, it asks you send in your IDs (drivers license, passport, etc). 

Considering I created this FB profile with my author pseudonym...That's not going to happen for me - and the number of other people doing the same thing. 

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.wired.com/2015/06/facebook-real-name-policy-problems/amp/ So for the time being, I'm stuck unless I go and recreate a profile or a page for my author works. Thanks for nothing, Facebook.