Ask HN: Stuck with Facebook Login (forgot password)

[jaysonqpt]

My friend is having a Facebook account with around 5000 friends. He forgot his password and was unable to reset his password. I came to know that his account has Facebook protect enabled which automatically enables 2 factor authentication.

But the problem is that he doesn't have any 2 factor authentication methods setup! That means he cannot reset the password or add a 2 factor authentication method.

He has access to the Facebook account from Facebook app installed on an Android phone he no longer uses. Please note that he has access to the linked phone number. But since 2 factor is enabled through "protect", it is not enough to do anything!

I have found absolute no way to contact Facebook for this problem. Can anyone help with this?

[wsgeorge]

> Can anyone help with this?

I don't have any assistance to give, only that I recently had some FB login trouble myself, and maybe they should contact FB support. They might be required to provide some legal ID (another colleage who had to access a hacked account had to do this)

I only came to say that Facebook engineering seems broken. There does seem to be a lack of quality control in the company, and it shows up in weird edge cases like this.

I expect more threads on this in the future when it becomes harder to ignore.

[jaysonqpt]

Thanks. My issue is that there is no way to contact Facebook support. It is crazy that they don't have even a way to report big issues like this. The account in question is supposed to be too important for them to automatically enable "protect".

[verdverm]

Is the problem that the password reset link looks like it is throwing an error?

I had this the other day, doing my login once every couple of years.

It required that I turn off any ad blocking and allow cookies to get the "error" to go away. I was then able to do the whole forgot password / login thing.

[jaysonqpt]

No. The problem is that Facebook has automatically enabled 2 factor protection(due to large friends count) without corresponding 2 factor methods in place!!. To reset password, 2 factor authentication is needed, but there is no method and it cannot be setup since it requires password!!

And there is no way to contact Facebook.