I wonder if anyone remembers the character Howard Beale from the academy award winning 1976 film Network, written by Paddy Chayefsky . He said the following:
“I am Mad as Hell and I am not going to take it anymore.” Well so am I !
I have lost it. The Big Companies are taking and never giving anything back.
Facebook is the first in this series of my Mad As Hell articles.
What Is Facebook To Us?
Many of us have put our pictures and our correspondence on social media. One social media giant, Facebook, is the home to millions of our pictures and communications. I don’t get my news from there, only because it slides over to the left. But for news about my friends and family, and keeping up to date with what is going on with them, it’s a great place. That is until it no longer works!
On Sunday somewhere around 3pm, my Facebook page was hacked. They have an elaborate way of attempting to find a way to recover your page. That is, until the cyber thieves figure it out, and put in more elaborate measures to steal your life. As of today, 2 days later, I am shut down. Thankfully that part works. But getting it back, well, it does not look like it will happen any time soon.
Facebook – A Company That Does NOT Respond To Problems
Facebook is part of META. A Multi Billion Dollar worldwide company. However, you see, for a company as large as Facebook, there is not a single person to talk to. So here I show how the scenario works:
Step 1: You get an email. It says that Facebook noticed someone changed your password. Now, if you are not on your email 24/7 this has the effect of a thief in your home when you are out at the grocery store, and you get a letter two days later telling you – “Did you know someone entered your home today?”
I’VE BEEN HACKED!!!
I am an IT professional. I should know better. Guess what? Frank, you have been hacked!
Well, you’ve heard of the term –“As useless as yesterday’s newspaper”. The new term should be –“As useless as a Facebook security warning that your account has been hacked.” By the time you see the email in a few hours, your thief has changed your email address associated with the account, and your password, and you are locked out. This person lives in Tacoma, Washington. I live on the east coast in Maryland. Why they would go after my Facebook account makes no sense to me…
FACEBOOK – Let Me Fix This ?
Any normal person would move to the next step and notify Facebook they’ve been hacked…. You use your ID to enter YOUR page, and enter your password, and Facebook sends a message to you that it is an old password.
If you request a new password, the fun begins. As you are sent to another page, which gives you a way to get it back, they will give you a code. Only the email address is nothing you have ever been associated with… EVER! For me it was a Hotmail account, that someone had set up in my absence.
You are still thinking – what is going on? So you think, try another way, because you’ve already tried your password- that didn’t work. So you click on the next icon and this comes up:
The Facebook Response: The Definition of INSANITY
This is when the insanity starts to creep in. “Doing something over and over again expecting a different result.” Well – nobody said that having your life on Facebook was sane, so.. let’s just continue down the rabbit hole. If you click NOT YOU? The Facebook app sends you back to placing your email address in the field, which ultimately brings you back to the same place. (The zone of insanity)
So then you move to phase two and “I no longer have access to these”, by clicking that field. So now you are in a place, where YOU THINK Facebook will help you…. NOPE!
Step 1 – Facebook insinuates there are multiple methods, on the ‘confirm it’s you’ screen. But the only method is to copy your photo ID.
Step 2 – upload your ID (My wife told me this was insane, but I did it)
However, in this scenario, Facebook will not accept a picture you can take with a steady hand. You must hold your photo ID up to a camera. This method is also part of the insanity.
Facebook Methods – Perpetuate Defeat
In reality, your hand may not be steady enough to do this, or your camera just can’t get a good enough picture, and some spots are blurry. Try eight or nine times, and settle on what you think is the best, and send it to Facebook. (Now I am not dumb enough to put my personal information out there, but this is the screen… )
So I hit next and send it in. Keep in mind, there are two things wrong in this scenario:
- My legal name is Francis, and I use Frank as my name on Facebook, that’s what people call me (thanks MOM!).
- My last name on Facebook has an apostrophe, D’Onofrio (that IS MY NAME…which the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) does not recognize as a valid character).
How Facebook Responds
However, we can hope, and cheerfully Facebook responds:
Within 5 minutes the fun begins… You get email # 1 that Facebook received your uploaded picture.
They will check for
- Your name –– Uh OH (well I know there is a problem there)
- Photo – That should work
- Date of Birth – As Heiman Roth Says in the Godfather part 2 “I am always accurate about my age”
Hopefully you believe that you will have access to your account soon. No such luck. Ten minutes later Facebook replies:
FACEBOOK Support Is Ignoring Their Customers
Meanwhile, what happened? If you try to reply to the email, you get NO REPLY. They WILL NOT ACCEPT EMAILS.
Consequently, that’s IT!
WHAT? Where is customer support? You look for a number. You call the published number, +1 650-543-4800, which sends you to an answering machine. Correspondingly, the message proceeds to inform you Facebook does not invest in support.
Thank you, GOODBYE, and hangs up. BYE, BYE.
Certainly, a MULTI-BILLION dollar company we have entrusted with our data is providing support? NO! But, Facebook has no way to bring up any grievances. No phone call, no one to speak to. Evidently, Facebook is getting rich as an anonymous enormous company in the cloud, without any accountability. With the political clout to take what we give them, and provide nothing… Making money off their customers, and providing no support.
LinkedIn Fixed My Hack in 4 Hours
Business social media site, LinkedIn, had a customer service team to contact, and helped me resolve my issue within four hours.
This is my LinkedIn address. Frank D’Onforio | LinkedIn
FACEBOOK Makes Money To Circumvent Our Laws
How Do We Fix This?
Here is how it works: Provide campaign contributions to the right people, and they will maintain their antitrust status. They will sway elections, and call people out who disagree, as if we are insane. They will shut us down, because they have the power to do so. But, honestly, IS THIS AMERICA?
Do you know how this will stop?
1. A CLASS ACTION SUIT. AND/OR
2. Notifying every States Attorney General.
Unquestionably the way to fight on our behalf, is to have some bigger guys help us. Unfortunately, little ole me, doesn’t have the capacity to fight Facebook. But a class action suit or multiple states suing them certainly do…
This is idiotic. Oh, there are companies that can get it back for you. Pay us $100, to some guy in the cloud to recover what is mine… Who knows, he might be part of this scheme.
WAIT A MINUTE???
Shouldn’t Facebook be doing this for us?! They make enough money off of us through spying and data mining. They could help us with SOME SUPPORT.
Does anyone out there have an answer?
This is the little guy against the big kahuna. I was going to let this lie, pay the $100, and get it over with. But now I am very upset, (if you can tell).
Tell me, what would you DO?
Next on my List: State Farm Insurance: Like a good Neighbor, State Farm Won’t care… Try putting in a claim on your homeowners insurance.
What Would Elvis Say?
Lastly, Facebook forgot Elvis Presley’s number one rule: “Don’t ignore the fans who put you here!”
Generally, Facebook does not care – should they?
Let me know what you think.
Error: Contact form not found.
