Meta's Facebook Protect Takes It Too Far, Locks Out Phone Owners

Some Facebook users recently discovered that Meta's Facebook locked them out of their accounts regardless of whether they activated its latest security feature or not.

Facebook Protect Issue Details

The issue lies within Facebook Protect, the latest security feature of Meta's most popular social media platform. According to a CNET report, Facebook required high-profile users in December 2021 to activate the new feature to protect their accounts against cybercriminals and hacking attempts.

These high-profile people, which included journalists, government officials, and human rights activists, have until March 17 to activate the feature or risk Facebook locking them out of their accounts. 1.5 million people obliged and enabled the feature.

However, The Verge mentioned in their report several users received an email from Facebook notifying them to activate Facebook Protect. While the intended message is allegedly clear and harmless, it came across like a spam email as it was from an address that resembled a common form of spam.

The people who have received this email may have ignored the email due to its address. As such, they didn't activate the security feature.

Whether they did or didn't matter little. The people who did activate the feature still got locked out of their accounts and are currently having trouble getting back in. For instance, Twitter user Mike Morrell mentioned in their tweet that Facebook Protect's two-factor authentication code doesn't work.

People who ignored Facebook's email notification also reported the same. Another Twitter user, Liv, said in their tweet that Facebook Prtotect's text and security key options don't work while admitting they ignored Facebook's email notification.

Some people wanted to activate the security feature but couldn't do so before the March 17 deadline due to the code not working, as with the case of Twitter user Daniela, who posted her frustration on the security code on Twitter.

Meta's Response and Facebook Protect Details

Facebook's parent company, Meta, has yet to address the current issue despite The Verge and CNET reaching out to them regarding it.

The company did comment on people's tweets about them being locked out of their accounts by redirecting them to a Facebook Help Center page that discusses why their account is disabled, as is the case of Twitter user oumarjr.

Meta has yet to give a solution to the code issue.

Facebook Protect is the social media platform's two-factor authentication security feature that protects prominent people's accounts from getting hacked using two-factor authentication and monitors them for potential hacking threats.

According to Facebook's page on the feature, it believes that the new security feature is an "important step forward for these highly targeted communities."

"All Page admins of enrolled Pages will be required to go through Page Publishing Authorization to ensure the security of the page, regardless of whether or not individual Page admins choose to enroll in this program," Facebook said.

The social media giant also added that Page Publishing Authorization would ask people who manage the Pages in question to secure their accounts with Facebook Protect's two-factor authentication and confirm their primary locations.