Tell HN: My permanently deleted Facebook account reactivated without my consent

76 points by ssalazars 6 years ago | 12 comments

Hello HN community,

I permanently deleted my Facebook account about 2 years ago. Sometime in April, my wife and some family members asked me whether I had reactivated my Facebook account. To my surprise, the account had all the previous pictures and posts, even though Facebook promises to delete all your data after 30 days (I believe) of asking them to delete your account.

I've been searching around, and it seems Facebook does not have any sort of customer support. I have clearly not logged into the account, as I don't remember the password for such account.

What should I do?

kube-system 6 years ago |

Maybe it was reactivated by compromise? I would reset your password, review the access history, and delete it again.

ssalazars 6 years ago | |

The problem is, I don't have access to the email used to create this account. I created this account long time back, when hotmail was a thing. I haven't logged into that email account since 2004. I tried getting access to it, but wasn't able to do so. So basically, this account is in a weird state where it exists, but I don't have access to it.

fsociety 6 years ago | | |

Sounds like your email was compromised

indemnity 6 years ago |

Likewise, my Facebook account (mainly used as a dump of my photos from Instagram), got terminated for a reason I've not been able to ascertain, Facebook never responds, so my wife gets invites on my behalf from friends.

Maybe a blessing in disguise?

My Instagram account is still fine though, since I neglected to use Facebook login for it but email instead shrug

Ahmedb 6 years ago |

I deactivated my account a couple of years ago and then realized someone has been impersonating me. So I reactivated and used the Jumbo app to monitor and wipe out all the content from both Facebook and Google. They run weekly checks and remove anything you setup including tags by other people.

ylee 6 years ago |

Meanwhile, my Facebook account was disabled in the middle of last year without explanation, and with no response to use of the only available appeals option.

bobbydreamer 6 years ago |

You cannot just get out of the matrix. You have unfriend everyone manually, delete all albums and photos and then deactivate the account.

miga 6 years ago |

If you are EU citizen or resident that is clearly a serious violation of GDPR. They should have deleted your data on request.

That said, I am not litigation specialist, so not sure how to proceed from here.

morelikeborelax 6 years ago |

I never created my Facebook. My Gmail address is a common 6 character nickname and people use it as a throw away address all the time.

Sometimes they use it to sign up for things that don't verify email. Any major service I've ignored and go to try usually has my email registered.

I deleted Facebook 3 times before giving up. I believe people were trying to reset the password and Facebook recreated the account. I have left it since before GDPR came in, but I would put money on it being an attempt to re-enable the account.

longtom 6 years ago |

Facebook should be destroyed. No company should have that much information about that many people's private lives.

allarm 6 years ago | |

No. Sharing (private) details is a digital right, no one forces the fb users to do that. But there should also be a right to control the information that you’ve shared. An easy way to remove it.