Please don't make me choose between sanity and facebook.

April 29, 2015 2:15 PM

Quit Facebook. No regrets. Except now I'm locked out of a number of websites I joined by clicking that "sign up with Facebook" button. How do I get in to these sites without reactivating my FB account?

The sites, specifically, are RubyLane and Academia.edu. I'd really like access to my accounts on those websites, but don't want to have to reactivate my Facebook account to do so.

The websites won't let me login with my email account.

Does anyone know a workaround to this problem?

Thanks for your help!

posted by Miss T.Horn to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

Can you reactivate facebook just long enough to log into the account and change the login information? Most sites I've seen have an option to de-link from social media accounts buried deep inside their settings menu, but you have to be logged in to access them.
posted by phunniemee at 2:18 PM on April 29, 2015 [4 favorites]

Try doing clicking "I forgot my password." My company took off social logins and that's what users had to do to change to using their email address. These websites *have* your email address because they pulled it from Facebook.

The other option would be to email customer support for these sites (from whichever email address was linked to your Facebook account) and ask them what to do.
posted by radioamy at 2:51 PM on April 29, 2015 [2 favorites]

I have a placeholder Facebook account (via a secondary email address that I use when websites force me to sign up for garbage) with absolutely no friends/contacts just so I can use particular websites but don't have to deal with Facebook and its draining temptations. That might be an option?
posted by thebots at 5:51 PM on April 29, 2015 [3 favorites]

This is something that depends entirely on the website in question. If they coded it so that you can use the 'forgot password' feature to recover the account, then great, but there is no requirement for them to provide that functionality. If forgot password doesn't work I'd say that you can either reactivate your FB account long enough to log in and change the accounts to not require facebook, or you can try contacting the people who run the site and explaining your situation.
posted by Aleyn at 10:04 PM on April 29, 2015

I stopped using Facebook and found I had this problem. So I opened a new account, without my photo, and with 'fake' location etc. details to prevent people from thinking they could friend me from real life.

I mostly use it for competitions and did use it for buy/sell groups, so it means I can enter stuff and 'share' without spamming any actual people.
posted by mippy at 7:35 AM on April 30, 2015