The Risks of Using Facebook

As part of my author business I use Facebook for advertising. Which works well for me.

Except…

This morning I went to log into Facebook and it says that’s not my password. Even though it is. And when I click on forgot password expecting some sort of link to my email to reset it, nothing happens. So I had to add a new email to my account which may or may not work.

Here’s where the problem is with Facebook and companies like it that try to shortcut customer service in favor of automation.

There is no way to report what I believe is a technology issue affecting my account. Because the only way to report an issue is to log into my account. Which I can’t do.

Earlier on Twitter there were people reporting issues with log in to Facebook by using Twitter. Because they can’t just frickin’ do it through Facebook. They had to use Twitter to give Facebook a heads up that their system was glitching for people with Business Manager accounts.

Now, there are two options for why this might be happening.

One, Facebook has a glitch in its log in process that wiped my password (and the prior one, because I tried that and did not get a “you entered an old password” message like I normally would) or in some other way impacted my ability to log in.

Or, two, I was hacked and someone changed the password on me.

If this was a personal account where I just log on and shoot the shit with people, that would be one thing.

But I have ads running right now. I am spending money on Facebook as I type this and I have no ability to stop that spend because they won’t let me communicate with them if I’m not logged in. There’s not even an emergency chat or phone number to call to shut down an account.

There should be.

But tech companies today think they don’t need things like that. I have no idea where the “what if” people are, but they don’t seem to work for any of these companies. Because you’d think one person in the room would’ve said, “but what about when users can’t log in and all our password reset processes don’t work for them?”

(A few years back I had a similar issue with Barnes & Noble of all places. Can’t reach support without logging in, but can’t log in, so what do you do?)

I hope this is just a glitch. Fortunately I did not start a bunch of new ads yesterday like I was going to. That means that all that’s running right now are two ads I’ve had running continuously for months.

But if it’s a hacker? I do not even want to know what my credit card bill is going to look like by the time I get this sorted.

Gee, thanks, Facebook. I guess I have to add “stupid tech companies that don’t actually want to hire staff to communicate with their users” to my list of business risks.

How do you even manage that one, though? Don’t do business with them at all? Certainly not an ideal choice.

But it’s a risk to know about, that’s for sure.