Why did Facebook kick us off?

August 3, 2008 7:49 PM

Why did Facebook disable our accounts?

Had a Facebook account for a while, never really used it. Recently my wife joined and started playing the game Mobwars. I got interested and also began playing. In the midst of all this, we both used Facebook to contact friends, join a few networks, etc.

Then one day, about a week ago, I was unable to log into my account. Instead I got this message: "Your account has been disabled by an administrator. If you have any questions or concerns, you can visit our FAQ page here." My wife got the same thing.
Swear ta God, we weren't doing anything weird just playing Mobwars and talking to friends via Facebook. I had signed up for Scrablous, but never played, but that's it.

There was no contact info in the message Facebook left us. I did discover the email address [e-mail] and email them, politely asking for an explanation, but to date have received no response.

Can anyone think of a reason why Facebook would do this?

Does anyone know of another way to contact Facebook and seek and explanation?

posted by anonymous to computers & internet (8 comments total)

You can probably google "facebook disabled account" as easily as I can, but did you see this?
posted by amro at 8:02 PM on August 3, 2008

This article - 13 reasons your Facebook account will be deleted - may help you identify the cause.

Leading examples include:

a) Using a false name, or a name that Facebook suspects might be false;
b) Sending too many friend add requests in a short space of time;
c) Sending too many message in a short space of time;
d) Operating an individual Facebook profile in place of a Page or a Group (for example, for a band or a restaurant or a club)

Facebook should eventually respond to your request, and they may be willing to negotiate with you. It's best to play the innocent card and ask for their forgiveness.
posted by skylar at 12:47 AM on August 4, 2008

Also take note that "disabled" does not mean "deleted"--I had an account that I started in 2004 with a now-defunct email address. I tried fruitlessly with several variations of an oft-used password combination, and finally got in long enough to add my birthday and change a few things... then, the next login was the straw that broke the camel's back, and my account was disabled for "too many login attempts." It took a few patient days of emailing their support line (with a few "there's nothing we can do" automated messages), but they were able to change my address to one to which I did have access, and everything now functions as normal.

Their policy has a strange scorched-earth mentality to it, but if you accidentally triggered one of their flags with your normal activity, I imagine that you should be able to have the account restored. Good luck.
posted by zachxman at 3:31 AM on August 4, 2008

One of my friends had a surname of "Starbucks" and it took her AGES and heaps of documentation to prove that it was her ACTUAL surname, and not her being smart, but they disabled her account until after she had proved it was real.
posted by jonathanstrange at 5:49 AM on August 4, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

It may, too, be that the pattern of both of your activity suggested to them that you were both the same person using two accounts -- that would probably qualify under a.

In the case of C, I got a warning message about that, and didn't get my account disabled because I stopped, though I have to admit, it seemed profoundly lame to me.

I had recently joined Facebook, and I went through my list of exchange students I knew in Brazil to see how many of them I could find on Facebook, and messaged the ones where I was pretty sure it was them and asked if it was. For looking up old friends -- which I kind of thought was the point of Facebook -- I got a warning.
posted by jacquilynne at 7:16 AM on August 4, 2008

Why does facebook care so much about you using a real name???
I use a blatantly fake one myself, i didnt even know about this "rule".
posted by figTree at 7:39 PM on August 4, 2008

I asked Facebook to explain to me why they wanted to know my true age, rather than havign me claim to be over 18 or 13 or whatever, and they deleted me.

To be fair to Facebook, they may have gathered that I only opened a facebook to monkey with it...
posted by Lesser Shrew at 10:00 PM on August 4, 2008

figTree -- Facebook started out as literally that--a place with people's names and faces (and other bits of info) at a single school, sort of a virtual yearbook. The point was to enable people going to the same University to put names to faces, and vice versa. In that context, letting people sign up under false names would have defeated the purpose.
posted by elfgirl at 8:28 AM on August 5, 2008