This is part 3 of my journey after Meta (Facebook) wrongly disabled my account for an anonymous, rogue Instagram activity from an account I never owned. This post will talk about Meta Support, the lack thereof and the extortion level pay-to-play support model that needs serious attention by state’s Attorney Generals.
This whole fiasco stated on the morning on June 20th, 2024 when I logged into Facebook and received the following message.
No idea what they account was, how it was connected to my account (if at all), and what it did to trigger Facebook’s automated filters to instantly suspend my Facebook account… although the Instagram account broke whatever rules they are claiming. My account of 17 years was dead in the water. I worked that morning trying to find a link, an email, a form, something to send into Meta to get this looked at. The TL;DR version is that apparently, and confirmed, to get close to what resembles human interaction is to pay $15/month for Meta Verified Support. Since my Facebook account was shut down, the only option was to get this support on my real Instagram Account that was not impacted by this.
I did and began trying their online chat and email. Ultimately it drives you to email them. Over the next week I received many responses, most fairly quickly, but most appeared to be canned, pre-written responses that a human may have been behind putting it together but was not writing them.
Response 1:
Hi
Upon further investigation, we cannot currently assist you with this request. If you haven’t tried this already, we encourage you to report this issue via facebook.com/hacked or instagram.com/hacked.
If you’ve already tried this option and are not able to complete the process, I would suggest trying on your mobile browser / within the app rather than a desktop browser. If you’ve already tried this from your mobile device and cannot complete the process, unfortunately there may be no way to recover your account.
….
Response 2 (No account to access links):
Hi,
If your account is disabled, you won’t be able to log in. Please keep in mind that there are many reasons why an account might be disabled, and we handle each of these cases differently.
….
The best way to appeal for suspended account is through this link: facebook.com/hacked . It’s the fastest way to initiate a review. You can expect each appeal to be reviewed with care and appeal decisions are final.
…
If you’ve already tried this option from your mobile device and cannot complete the process, unfortunately there may be no way to recover your account.
Response 3 (New link, but broken URL):
Thank you for your email response.
We know how important this is for you.
We don’t mean to make an impression of not being able to help however, at this point, it is the extend of service we are able to offer. We thank you for your understanding in regards to this matter.
Our team exclusively addresses requests on behalf of accounts that your Meta verified account directly maintains, in accordance with the creator’s policy and in an effort to foster a secure and encouraging environment for all Creators.
We hope the above clarifies. We understand this was not exactly the outcome you were aiming for, realize that we are here to guide you as best we can based on the information available to us. If there is anything at all that you would like me to clarify, please feel welcome to do so.
Here at Meta, we are always looking for ways to improve the experience for our users to make sure they have the best experience possible. Any feedback or suggestions so you can voice your concerns as we value your opinion this will help us to improve the Facebook experience for everyone: https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/268228883256323.
Response 4 (Repeat answer):
I hope this email finds you well.
The online recovery tools are the best path to recover either disabled or hacked account. If none of the links work then we recommend to try it from a different or browser. Also log into your account using the last known login information before it got disabled . You should see a disabled message along with the option to appeal.
If you do not have the option to appeal at all, you may utilize this link:
Please be advised that, at this point, there is no additional pathway available for us to move forward besides our previous explanations.
Response 5 (provided same broken URL):
This is Kris from Meta Pro Team and I am supervising the team that was assigned to handle your case earlier. We are contacting you in reference to your ticket number: ### whereby you have contacted us in regards to your Facebook account disabled where it is connected to a different Instagram Account.
…
We also provide you the form where you can submit request review for your account: https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/260749603972907
Response 6 (Admitted to the anonymous issue, yet the burden is on me to fix. not provided with working links yet):
Thank you for your response and we hope this email finds you well.
We appreciate your cooperation in sharing the details with us and we can totally understand how important it is for you to be able to regain access to your account. We will provide you with the available pathway for you to take in order to regain access to the account.
Moving into your concern, we understand that your account was linked to an anonymous Instagram account and it was then disabled. With that being said, to set the proper expectation, whenever an account is suspended, you will need to submit an appeal on your end.
At the moment, please be informed that we have exhausted all our resources in order to provide you the best pathway to regain your access to your Facebook account. For now, we do understand the situation which you are in, however, for any account which has been disabled, the owner of the account would need to submit an appeal on their end.
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To proceed with submitting the appeal, after logging in, follow the on-screen instructions to submit your appeal. Keep in mind that in some cases we may not issue a warning before disabling your account. We also can’t restore accounts that were disabled for severe violations. Learn more about how we define severe violations from the Facebook Community Standards.
In my continuous and daily research and monitoring various channels where others are posting their slog against Meta, one posted something interesting. They got a response from Meta admitting that this situation is in fact a problem. This is the first crack showing that this could be a much larger vulnerability that scammers are exploiting at the expense of helpless victims, such as myself.
It has been almost a week since I got any more responses to my inquiries to Meta Support. I guess my $15/mo. ran out already.
The next step that I have found worked for some is to write everything up and send a snail, mail paper letter directly to their privacy offices.
Stay tuned…
Binary Blogger has spent 20 years in the Information Security space currently providing security solutions and evangelism to clients. From early web application programming, system administration, senior management to enterprise consulting I provide practical security analysis and solutions to help companies and individuals figure out HOW to be secure every day.
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