At the beginning of October, whilst away on holiday, I received an email from Facebook, asking if I had changed my email address and my phone number on my account. I had not done this and told them so. There was an option to click on if I thought my account had been hacked, so I clicked on this, as it was obvious that it had been. I was then asked to enter my password, which I did on my mobile phone, since I did not have my computer with me on holiday. This immediately aroused suspicion with them because I rarely use my phone to access my account whilst at home. I was asked to enter a code which was emailed to me very quickly but, having entered the code, I was then asked to enter a second code, which they were sending to my phone, but it did not arrive for several hours so, when I entered this code, I was told that I had waited too long to enter the code and I was directed back through the whole process again - emailed code, which came in seconds, followed by another code to my phone, which took hours - again I was told I had waited too long! On my return from holiday, I started up my computer to see that I had several Facebook notifications, so I tried to view these but found that I had been had been 'temporarily' locked out of my account while they 'carried out their investigations' into the matter. Now I have been told by a friend that my old account is ' unavailable at the moment', so it seems to have been closed down. I don't think much of Facebook, but I use it to keep in touch with my daughter and grandchildren, who all live at the other end of the UK from me, several of my old school friends and also my brother and sister-in-law, who live in New Zealand . Because we all lead busy lives, it is not always possible to use the phone to keep in contact, so it has been quite distressing to keep receiving notifications about people's posts, which I cannot log in to read. I eventually had to set up a new account but, because I couldn't get into my old account, I was unable to message friends to tell them about the change, so I then had to search for everyone who was on my friends list to send them a friend request. It was not that easy to do this, as there were many people listed with similar names but, when I eventually found the account of someone and tried to send them a friend request, I was told that I could not send them a request because I 'don't know them'! I was advised to message these people directly to ask them to send a request to me but several people didn't respond because they weren't convinced that it was really me! If I happened to have phone numbers, it was easy enough to text them and explain, but I just don't have numbers for most of those on my friends list. Over the last 7/8 weeks I have kept trying to log into my old Facebook account, even having to send Facebook a copy of my Passport to prove my identity, which they accepted by email, but I am still unable to access my old account because they send me email verification codes, followed by another code sent by SMS, but these texts continue to take HOURS to arrive and I don't always have the time to watch for a message to arrive so that, when it does, I am told I have taken too long! On a number of occasions I have also been told that I had been locked out from trying to log into my account because, I was entering details 'too fast'! As a trained touch-typist with a speed of 70+ words a minute, it is normal for me to type fast! Having had my ID accepted from my passport details, I do wonder why it is taking Facebook so long to investigate, when I have done everything they have asked of me, and they are apparently still 'investigating' but how do you get in touch with them? I have also tried clicking on the option to 'recover your account', but that has been unavailable since 6th October - What are those people doing?
