No I Didn’t Block You On Facebook

It all happened while I was asleep.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdyms0G8KJQ

No … I didn’t block you on Facebook. Turns out I don’t have an account anymore.

Here’s what happened.

While I was cozy and asleep in my bed on Sunday morning, a hacker in Vietnam managed to get access to my Facebook account even though I have two-factor authentication turned on. (My email and phone are both still secure—I checked.

Funny enough Facebook had me sign up for “Facebook Protect” over a year ago because they said my account has higher reach than most and needed enhanced security features. Apparently those suck.

So I woke up to an email telling me that someone from Ho Chi Minh city changed my password, and when I pressed the big It Wasn’t Me button I learned that my account was disabled — as in, DELETED. The landing screen told me that decision was permanent, final, with no recourse to appeal.

Oh — and whatever the hacker did with my account was so bad that they wouldn’t even tell me what rule I actually broke: “For security purposes.”

I’m on record as NOT being a big fan of Facebook or its founder, but all the same the platform did a great job getting me to rely on it more than more over the past fifteen years. It’s a big hub of my personal and professional life.

I have important personal and business contacts I connect with exclusively on Facebook. I’ve used Facebook as my login for several websites I use on the regular. I’ve built audiences for my personal writing projects, my podcast, my local independent journalism all using Facebook pages and groups. I sell a bunch of stuff there directly right off my page or in specialty groups, sometimes hundreds of a dollars per week. I’ve raised a ton of money for great charities over Facebook, and while my daughter was in cancer treatment the community we built gave our family support and kept us going during one of the darkest times we’ve ever been through. The D&D group I’ve been playing in for years uses Facebook Messenger as our voice chat solution.

I’m going to see if there’s anything I can do to get my account restored but it’s an uphill battle. Facebook does NOT have a customer service department and decisions like this are made by the all-knowing Algorithm.

I’ll let everyone know how things go. In the meantime, if you’re on other social media follow me there!

Thanks everyone.

Oh — and hey Mark? You can Zuck a .