Ken's Corner
This Time It’s Real - Facebook Verifications
I get calls fairly often from customers who have run into something and wonder if what they’ve just had pop up is a scam. There’s a lot that are out there that are a scam, but many of those can be bypassed easily by just restarting the computer. If it’s something I haven’t heard of and it sounds pretty fishy, I’ll always recommend bringing the system in for a check-up.
The other day, I had someone ask me if they really had to upload a photo in order to get into their Facebook account or if it was a scam. I was pretty sure it was, indeed a scam.
I was wrong.
Apparently since last fall, Facebook has been having some people confirm their Facebook accounts by uploading a photo or, in some cases, a copy of a form of ID. If you don’t do so, you can’t use your account. It doesn’t seem to happen often (Again, I’d never heard of it before, but I’ve seen reports of it happening as far back as October of last year.), and I’m not sure of the algorithm they’re using to pick people to do this to.
The reasons are apparently two-fold:
- First, it’s an added level of security to confirm the person using your account is actually you. Accounts get hacked pretty often on Facebook, and this is supposed to prevent that from happening as often.
- Second, Facebook is trying to keep people from creating false accounts or ‘bots that inundate some sites with blatantly false propaganda and misinformation in the attempt to … make people angry? Fool the gullible? Who knows why they do it, but although it sounds like a conspiracy theory, a lot of it comes from our friends in Russia (“friends” is obviously sarcasm.).
Not everyone needs the latest technology, and sometimes this ID issue becomes somewhat difficult if not impossible to surmount. Case in point: The customer who called with the photo ID question likes things nice and simple. They have an older flip-phone, thus no camera to take a photo. There’s no scanner, so they can’t upload a photo that way. Thus, they can’t upload a photo, and they’re locked out of their account.
There are websites out there which can use AI to generate a photo-realistic picture of someone, but some who have used that technology were permanently banned from Facebook when the subterfuge was detected. Not recommended.
Facebook maintains the problem can be fixed by contacting the Facebook Help Center, although my experiences with the Help Center don’t fill me with confidence. Good luck.
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- Written by: CPCC & IVNet
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