Specifically, the decision whether to bother with Facebook anymore.
I admit, I’ve been an indifferent user, checking on friends only about once a day, hiding or ignoring all games, loading minimal photos. In fact, I’ve hidden more “friends” than I show. Given the minimal usage (although all the usage has been for the stated purpose fo reconnecting with old friends) I’ve been sort of wondering whether to taper off using it and just go back to old-fashioned e-mail to stay in touch. Not that I would ever hear from any relatives under 30 again, but oh well.
So today I go to log on and Facebook tells me the account has been disabled because they have determined that I am using a fake name. Um, what? It has been my legal name for many a year now, thanks. And I can only get my account rectivated by uploading a picture of a valid government issued ID. Er, sounds like scam city to me.
So, did Facebook get hacked and someone is randomly engaging in attempted identity theft, or is Facebook run by a bunch of assholes (not that the two need be mutually exclusive). Enquiring minds want to know. Either way, I think I am done with FB. It’s back to e-mail and Photobucket for me. Practicall makes me a Luddite I expect.
I just searched for a friend, a certain Mr. Cocaine, on Facebook. I didn’t get any matches. Then again, he doesn’t strike me as the type to sign up for it.
I wonder if my husband will be cut off too - our last name is also the name of a city (which was named after a person ). Maybe I need to start a profile with a fake name that sounds real. I thought my name was perfectly ordinary. Go figure.
My pic is a candid from a party, and my account is fine. Maybe because you’re on infrequently, it “forgot” you. BTW, ALL my “friends” use candids, and a few use nicknames.
Facebook keeps telling me that my email address is invalid- it’s my own domain, so I know it’s valid, but they won’t even send me a verification email. They haven’t kicked me off the site, yet, but I keep expecting it.
I know it’s unlikely, but you are sure that your domain hasn’t been hacked in some way, right? There is a list of banned domains, and if your site actually got on it.
The more benign version is that it has an unsupported character.
I signed up under my married name with no problem, but when I tried to add my maiden name to that, I had to explain it twice before Facebook would let me. My sister and niece had the same trouble. My brother had that problem so he just used our mother’s maiden name. My sisters in law used just their own maiden names so they didn’t have to deal with it. I understand why Facebook might have had a problem with it, but reading the article in that link makes me wonder if they’ll be cancelling me sometime soon.
I was having the same problem earlier this year - Facebook would suddenly decide my email address was invalid :rolleyes:, and I’d have to verify it. Half the time they wouldn’t even send me the email. This happened several times a week, and went on for like two months.
This is gonna sound weird, and it could just be coincidence - I have no way of knowing:
I never log out of Facebook. I live alone, no one else is ever on my computer, so there’s no reason to. When I’m done with Facebok I shut down Firefox and restart it before doing something else, but I don’t go through the process of logging out. So anyway, when I was having this dumb email problem, I took a trip to my parents’ for a week. While I was there, of course I’d actually logged in and out of the site, and not once did Facebook tell me my email address was invalid. Furthermore, after I got home I had to actually log in to Facebook from my own computer, and since then it has never given me any lip about my email address.
Like I said, maybe it’s just a coincidence, but my theory is that something got screwy with my account, and all that was needed to fix it was to log out and back in again. I haven’t been able to test this, but a couple of months back I had some other little problem with Facebook (that I can’t remember now), and logging out/in solved it.
It’s not uncommon for sites to ban whole IP address if they think something is up. Then you have to prove yourself to get back in. In some ways it does make sense, to prevent something from happening.
If you have your own domain name through a service like 1and1 or GoDaddy (among others) it’s likely other names are being hosted on the same server as you. So one of those could be banned and the site is blocking anything a reverse IP would indicate
You type in your name such as AcmeCoyote.Com. It will give you server it’s being hosted on (formated XX.XXX.XX.XXX) and the other domains being hosted.
My domain name has 170 other domain names.
For examples let’s say my server is 88.777.66.555 and hosts AcmeCoyote.Com
Thanks AoD, that may be what killed my account, since my husband, who shares my last name, did not have his disabled. If they reinstate my account without requiring my ID, fine, but if not I’m not going to sweat it. I got used to being off the TV grid a few years ago when I got fed up with cable, I can get used to only being socially networked to people I actually care about.
My girlfriend changes her Facebook name to something new and implausible every few months. She hasn’t run into any problems with that yet.
Why would Facebook care what your “real” name is? It’s not like it affects their ability to deliver targeted ad content or whatever the point of Facebook is.
On that note, what are the legalities of using an alias? I thought as long as you are not using an alias for any illegal reason or purpose, it was completely legal to use an alias.
Stage names are legal, although they may not be on someone’s ID. I know a few people who use their stage names on Facebook, and do not want to share their legal names online.
If they want real names not just from Americans, but from people of other nationalities that have other laws regarding legal names this could cause more trouble for facebook.
