A sliver of hope when Meta zaps your Facebook profile

My buddy, Bob, left this Facebook post in early March, 2025, about how he found a way to recover his Facebook profile and it caught my attention. He lives in Illinois. Here is what he said.

EIGHT MONTHS AGO someone tried to hack my account, and in response, facecrook locked me out of my own account. I haven’t had access to anything since early July. I jumped through lots of hoops, but eventually all it would do is ask me to upload a photo ID which I must have repeated dozens of times. Eventually they deleted my account completely.

Thanks to intervention from the Illinois Attorney General Identity Fraud folks, I finally have it back. It seems like notifications aren’t getting to me, but I can again post, and see what’s going on in the cyber world.

Most important, I’ve still got all my friends, groups, photos, and other history, some of which would have been impossible to get back otherwise.

I wanted to know more. So I asked. Here’s what I learned.

A former colleague actually suggested it. She knew someone that went that route in another state. It took 4 months from when I contacted them until I got the account back.

There is absolutely no way to contact facecrook! No working phone number, emails to C level executives are ignored, and their online recovery method left me in an infinite loop.

I can’t wait for facecrook to be the next myspace!

…

I went to the AG Identity theft web site and filled out their incident / complaint report form.

It was an 8 month outage. It was 4 months when I got the AG suggestion from the friend. It was another 3 months until I got a USPS letter from the AG asking for an email address that never had been associated with facecrook to recover the account, and then several more weeks until I got a recovery code email at that address. And they NEVER asked for ANY of the stuff that the facebook account recovery crap wanted.

Here is the Illinois Attorney General identity theft web site.

…

And I’m still surprised that I was able to get it back. It never would have happened without the AG involvement. I talked with their people at various community events, … They gave me the brochures on identity theft, and pointed me to the web site.

I had actually written off getting anything back after a couple weeks, when facecrook recovery crap kept asking me for a copy of my ID (I sent them 5 different ones) with no success.

Using LinkedIn to find connections at facecrook, I contacted 3-4, and never heard back from anyone.

https://www.elliott.org/ writes a travel help column, but his web site has corporate contacts for all sorts of companies, including facecrook. Contacted all of them, never got a response.

I procrastinated on the AG stuff until talking with their people at one of the outreach events.

Here are Bob’s relevant sections in the Attorney General form. Prompts are bold. I edited for punctuation and italicized and disguised or removed identifying information.

Briefly describe the transaction and your complaint *

On [date] someone apparently tried to hack my Facebook account.

They sent me an email to approve a password change, which I denied.

But they then locked ME out of my own account, and have refused to let me back in since then.

They asked for a photo which I sent them.

Then they asked for my cell phone number which I provided.

Then they asked for a copy an ID and they keep asking for this no matter what I send them. IIRC I’ve sent them a passport, work photo ID, school ID, RTA ID, voters registration card, and more. There is no way to contact someone for help to get my account back.

What form of relief are you seeking? (exchange, repair, refund, product delivery, etc.) *

Restore my account so I can access it and friends and family can see all of the material I’ve posted over 15+ years.

The email associated with this account id has always been [email].

For personal security reasons the user name is an old family spelling of the last name Bob [family name], and the birth date on record with them is [date] (I never provide web sites with my actual birth date.)

In an earlier blog post about Meta zapping a Facebook profile, I had heard that the California Attorney General had no influence recovering Facebook profiles. This situation in Illinois seems to contradict what California said. Or maybe Bob got lucky.

Bob’s experience reinforces a lesson. Keep your good stuff someplace you control and use social media to advertise it. Do not depend on any social media platform to define your brand. Never forget, we are not social media customers, we are raw material.

One last comment from Bob.

I remember the story of the pigs on the farm commenting on the free food. They aren’t the customer, they are the product. Send me a link when you post it. If [this] helps one person get their account back, it’s worthwhile.

Thanks, Bob. I sent you a link. – Greg