Facebook Locks Out Users Who Didn’t Activate Facebook Protect

Mysterious emails said to have been received by a bunch of Facebook earlier in the month of March are said to have been from Facebook. The spam-like email titled “Your account requires advanced security from Facebook Protect” was once served by the social media giant and essentially nudged them to turn on the Facebook Protect feature. Along with the email comes a link Facebook users could tap on to turn on the feature. Facebook users who refused to turn on this feature by a certain date stand been locked out of their account.

According to Facebook, the Facebook Protect Feature is a “security program” designed for users that stand being targets of malicious hackers who are out there in their numbers and would stop at no measure to achieve their goals. Such users Facebook considers might be targets are “human rights defenders, journalists, and government officials.” The program has been designed to do things like ensuring those target accounts are closely monitored for hack threats and are protected by two-factor authentication (2FA).

Wondering what two-factor authentication (2FA) is? Let’s find out. Sometimes referred to as two-step verification or dual-factor authentication, is a security process or mechanism which is now used by most tech platforms, in which users provide two different authentication factors to verify themselves. 2FA is implemented to better protect both a user’s credentials and the resources the user can access.

However, it turns out that the email address (security@facebookmail.com) the social media giant has sent these mysterious emails from looks like a rather common form of spam, and so chances are that many people may either not see them or have ignored it. A lot of people don’t check spam emails. In fact, the gap between the number of emails who check spam email and those who don’t are greatly wide.

A lot of these target users must have been locked out of their accounts for not activating Facebook Protect before the deadline. The first deadline the company put out for users to hit the link was Thursday, March 17th. And now a lot of them might also be having troubles with the process that Facebook has provided to get them back in. Those people are apparently getting another message explaining why they can’t get into their accounts and offering to help them turn it on.

A number of these users have taken to Twitter and other social platforms to make complaints and call out Meta on being locked out of their accounts even if they do have the appropriate safeguards. Some users have complained that their text-based 2FA is not responding. Others have narrated their inability to get through the activation process even before the deadline and as a result, are now being locked out of their accounts. Facebook is yet to officially respond to address the problem as well as provide a working plan to get these accounts reactivated.