[treeman79]

My wife and most of her friends have all lost their Facebook accounts at least once. They all gave up getting them back. Many tears as most of them use it as their only photo backup for kid pictures.

At this point it’s just routine for them to have their account taken over and lost periodically.

[Syonyk]

> Many tears as most of them use it as their only photo backup for kid pictures.

Painful as that is, those of us who tend more technical should be helping people understand the nature of social media companies, and encouraging backups in whatever form is supported.

... and then helping push them over the edge to find other ways to communicate with friends, share photos, etc. "Do it all on Facebook!" was novel, 10-12 years ago. Now it's just a lack of creativity and a willingness to help add feet to the next yacht.

[mnahkies]

My girlfriend's mother had this happen to her recently. They got in and changed her password, profile picture and name. Account recovery options didn't work, and also reporting the profile as stolen / whatever option was most appropriate on the form didn't achieve anything.

I found it quite confusing as to the motivation, and seeming gap in the armour of automated bans.

As far as I know, many people get instant banned if they attempt to setup a second profile for their Oculus or similar, I assume the motivation is to get a fake account that has history to avoid this. What surprises me though is that changing password, profile picture and full name in quick succession + attempts to recover / report don't trigger this mechanism/some kind of review process.

[baby]

I feel like losing all your stuff is part of your digital journey. Then you learn the importance of backups.

Nowadays cloud backups are almost becoming default which is a good thing imo.

[black_puppydog]

Facebook was their cloud backup

[Ekaros]

Backup is a backup only if you have working copy. If not it is the working copy even not in use.

[baby]

Facebook is not a backup tool, that was their mistake.