At the beginning of this month, some Facebook users received an email from the company to enable Facebook Protect for their accounts. However, many people seem to have ignored the email, as some generally thought it was just spam, now, 9to5Mac reports that, in failing to activate Facebook Protect, some people are now locked out of their accounts.
Users who received Facebook Protect email and didn’t enable it might be locked out of Facebook
As you may have heard, not everyone has gotten emails urging them to enable Facebook Protect. According to Meta, this feature is specifically targeted at journalists, people who could generally be targeted by malicious users, including human rights activists and government officials. Emails urging them to activate Facebook Protect were coming from security@facebookmail.com and generally could have been ignored as spam.However, the emails were legitimate. Users had until March 17 to sign up for Facebook Protect, which is, long story short, a two-factor authentication system to improve the security of Facebook accounts. The emails that were sent had a link to sign up for Facebook Protect.
And now, it seems some of the users who didn’t sign up (but had received the email) have trouble logging into their accounts and getting back on Facebook. Reportedly, Facebook has given info to the affected users on how to get back to their accounts, but it seems that it is not working for everyone. Some of the users took it to Twitter in order to get a fix for the situation.
Facebook’s Head of Security Policy at Meta, Nathaniel Gleicher, has acknowledged the issue on Twitter and has announced they are working on the cases where people have been locked out of their Facebook accounts and trying to fix the issues.
5/ We’re looking into isolated examples where people may need help enrolling in the program. Thank you for your patience and we really appreciate people taking steps to secure their accounts.
— Nathaniel Gleicher (@ngleicher) March 19, 2022
Facebook Protect: what is it and who is it for?
Generally, Facebook (as well as any other platform) recommends every user use two-factor authentication for their accounts for security reasons. However, the Facebook Protect program is specifically designed for people who are more likely to get attacked by hackers in comparison to the average Facebook user. For the regular user, no action is required unless you’re prompted by Facebook to enroll in Facebook Protect. It is a program that helps the set group of people to have stronger account security protections, such as two-factor authentication, but at the same time, monitors for potential hacking threats.
The program was first tested in 2018 and expanded in 2020 in the United States. The global expansion of Facebook Protect started in September of 2021. According to a blog post by Meta on the topic, back in December, around 1.5 million accounts have the Facebook Protect feature enabled.
Basically, it makes two-factor authentication easier and provides a better user experience and support, according to Meta. A similar requirement is related to Page admins that have enrolled Pages. They are required to go through Page Publishing Authorization to ensure the security of the Page. This process has to be made regardless of whether the individual Page admin has decided to enroll in the Facebook Protect program or not.
Facebook has been working on fighting misinformation on the platform too
It seems that Facebook is trying to step up its game when it comes to security on the social media platform, but not only that: as we reported recently, it is also actively fighting misinformation in an attempt to make the platform safer. The thing is, you probably have heard that in the past, Facebook has been heavily criticized for allowing misinformation to spread on there, and since then, the company has worked to prevent it.
The latest step that Facebook has taken in this direction is a new set of group Admin tools aimed at preventing misinformation.
