Facebook Is Logging People Out And Locking Them Out Of Their Accounts – Why?

Friday turned into complete and utter chaos as Facebook began randomly logging people out of their accounts, and when they tried to log back in, they realized they were also locked out. People reported via other forms of social media that the company itself was signing users completely out of their accounts for no real reason. Upon trying to sign back in, they were advised that they were locked out and needed to verify their identity to get back in.

Needless to say, this did not sit well with the majority of the internet. Also, it wasn’t just happening to a few people but those around the world and even big-time digital addicts.

It’s not just you…!
Facebook has logged out tons of people and locked their accounts (incl. me!) #facebookdown pic.twitter.com/NhcrV1gVxy

— Matt Navarra ?? (@MattNavarra) February 24, 2017

That is Matt Navarra, the director of social media for the Next Web and a self-proclaimed “Facebook Geek” and “Twitter Addict.”

The Next Web reported that Facebook was down entirely in some parts of the world, and users couldn’t even bring it up to log in. In the last hour, it has come back up for some people, but there are still countless people who can’t log in.

First of all, people were just being logged out of their accounts and making it seem like someone else had logged into their accounts from another device. The message popping up was telling people that they needed to “verify” their identity and change their passwords.

Some users did that and tried to log back in, but they still couldn’t get in. At that point, it would tell them that “this feature isn’t available right now.”

Very disappointed @facebook I will not follow these rules because there is no logic. You cannot just lock out anyone from their own account. pic.twitter.com/ZaytMhYDRU

— Karan (@Ji_suniye) February 24, 2017

While many users first thought that someone had tried to get into their account, the Independent reports that something is simply wrong with the system. The biggest issue is coming from the servers that allow users to actually log into the social media giant and it won’t allow them to get in at all.

Europe and the East Coast of the United States appear to have been affected the most, but the outages have been happening across the world. Maybe it has something to do with time zones and who may be awake and actually trying to log into Facebook, but so far, the problems are coming and going.

Eventually, Facebook did release a statement, as reported by the Next Web, to explain the issue.

“Earlier today an error in one of our systems designed to help prevent suspicious account access sent a small set of people to our account recovery flow unnecessarily. We have fixed the issue and are in the process of clearing the affected accounts from this recovery flow. We apologize for any inconvenience.”

So, there is no need to fear that there was a security breach of any kind. The fear may be greater, though, if people have extended periods of time that they can’t log into their Facebook accounts.

Facebook needs to realize that they are the top social media site in the world and there is never a moment when millions aren’t using it. The random outage, so to speak, on Friday made people lose their minds and start freaking out on Twitter, Reddit, and other online sites. It is one thing to have the site go down, but security measures begin to get questioned when users are logged out of their own accounts and then locked out completely for no reason.

[Featured Image by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images]