Facebook is a widely used application for business and social purposes. It is very frustrating to open your account and discover that your account is inaccessible at that particular moment. This simply means one possibility; the account might be temporarily locked. Facebook has a large user base and suffers from continuous hack-attempts. In order to ensure users’ information safety, Facebook security has devised a temporal locking technique to cover and monitor for the suspicious activities that would have occurred.
Due to the security system recently launched, users are restricted from using the Facebook platform with caution. The main targets are hackers and spammers. This system monitors suspicious activities according to the security rules of Facebook. However, this system affects naïve or innocent users; thus, the (Facebook Account Temporarily Locked) problem. The steps in this post will help you retrieve your account.
How to identify a locked account
Several unusual conditions will tell you, your account is locked. The list below helps you discover quickly when your account is locked:
- Problems signing in using correct details.
- Unable to post on Facebook.
- Failure to send messages
- Facebooks fail to create new groups, fan pages,
- Failing to change password, profile picture.
- Facing a Facebook unresponsive behavior
- Unable to send or receive friend requests.
- Failing to change Facebook settings
- Receiving an email from Facebook stated, “Facebook account temporarily locked because someone tried to access from an unknown device.”
What causes account temporarily locked problem
There are many reasons, which force Facebook to lock your account. Below are some of the primary reasons why that action happens.
Warnings from Facebook
Facebook monitors account activities. Whenever Facebook notices a malicious activity, an event that is breaking their golden rules, it warns the account owner. Facebook will lock or disable your account if you do not take heed of the warnings.
Reported for illegitimate activity
This usually occurs when another person reports your account to be a fake account, or the same person requests Facebook to block your account. Several reports from different individuals will cause your account to be classified as a spammer. This leads Facebook to lock or disable your account.
Suspicious Activity
Since Facebook monitors activities from every account, if Facebook notices a possibly harmful activity relating to your account, it will protect your account by locking it. This gives Facebook an upper hand in protecting its user’s information.
Adding too many friends on Facebook
Some people have a habit of sending too many friend requests to people, including unknown individuals. This action may cause Facebook to think that you are a spammer or a robot. Robots should not have accounts, and this can cause Facebook to lock or disable your account.
Too many posts
Once you start posting endlessly in a community group, you can become a spammer. Other posts that include tagging of some well-known celebrities are a breach of the privacy policy. Posts that contain pornographic content violates the regulation rules also. This can lead to disabling your account.
Logging in using several different devices
Facebook security extends to the type of devices used to log into your account. If you keep changing the accessories every time you log in, it will be classified as an unusual activity that may harm your account. To stop that assumed harm, Facebook disables your account, and it becomes inaccessible
Questionable identity
Facebook uses high security, which requires users to provide a correct full name to use Facebook. It is usually good to use pet names for your account, but this also is a simple way of getting your account locked. Some other things are to use celebrities’ pictures for your profile, undoubtedly wrong birth date, or creating an account for a non-existent person or company page.
Business posts
Advertising on Facebook is an efficient way of being connected to many people using social media. It is also an option of helping people to find things quickly. However, using your timeline for this purpose where you need to send mass messages and repeatedly posting on other calendars will end up classifying you as spam. Some businesses require you to ask from things like passwords and additional authentication information, or actions such as publicly asking a friend’s help with your password can lead to your account locking.
Security
Facebook takes security seriously such that a sudden increase of posts or link sharing in a usually dormant account might raise a red flag. Facebook will lock the account until it proves the activity safe.
How to unlock or Recover your Account
Facebook notifies its users when they lock accounts. You receive a warning message informing you of the action taken, stating, “For security reasons your account is temporarily locked.”
Facebook gives users an option to recover account, such as a link that says “how to unlock your Facebook account.”
You have to carefully follow these steps to recover your account.
Wait for a specific time and clear the cache.
Wait for 96hours without opening your account. Clean the browser history you usually use to login to your account. Clear the cache also;, this deletes all information saved about your account, including the saved passwords. After that, use a different browser to login to your account after a specified time.
If the above procedure fails, your account was locked due to suspicious activities or violations of terms. This means you need to verify that the account is truly yours. You can do so by using your mobile number on which you will receive a verification code. You enter the code on the Facebook sign-in page where it asks you for the verification code.
In other cases, your account might be locked due to a mistake, and you will need to submit an appeal to Facebook.
Follow the steps below in order to submit an appeal:
- Open this Facebook link from your browser https://www.facebook.com/.
- Enter your mobile number or email address. Note: this should be identical to the one you used to register your account.
- Enter your Full name.
- Lastly, attach your ID proof, by clicking on “Choose files” and submit.
- On the “Additional information,” you can write your concern.
- Click send.
Alternatively:
Your friends can help you.
The moment you get the “For security reasons, your account is temporarily locked” message. Use the following steps to recover your account:
- Type the Facebook link https://www.facebook.com/
- Login to your account using your credentials, username, and password.
- Open the security page and click on “Get help from friends.”
- Choose the friends you know and can contact now, from the trusted contact list.
- Click continue
- Facebook will then send a verification code to your contacts.
- Get the code from your friends and enter it in the prompted page.
- Your account is unlocked if the codes are identical.
Why does Facebook need to be temporarily locked
Facebook requires time-to-time maintenance. The Facebook team is responsible for delivering acceptable and quality services. Facebook deals with a vast number of users whose information requires excellent security. Due to increasing hack-attempts, Facebook has come up with many counter-attacking security measures. This includes monitoring activities that violate the privacy policy using Facebook bots.
There are many reasons why Facebook gets to lockout all Facebook users for a specified period. This is mainly due to maintenance. For a successful maintenance process to occur, accounts should be down. Which means there is no activity from users. Here are some of the causes for the maintenance to start.
Updating Databases or Clear-out Process
Facebook needs to clear fake accounts and duplicate profiles or inactive accounts. To do this, there should be no traffic from the users, and after the process, Facebook will have correct information on its users. However, this can affect some users if their accounts fall in those categories.
Malicious Activity
Facebook might notice normal activities occurring in some accounts or from external applications attacking accounts. For you to deal with such attackers, it might need to be temporarily inaccessible to minimize the damage to users. This will cause Facebook to be temporarily down.
Updates
Since Facebook is an evolving application, new changes are inevitable. Facebook can be temporarily down because of privacy policy updates. To add new features or to implement new features, Facebook needs to be temporarily locked out of its users for the changes to take place.
Users need to wait for the maintenance to finish to start using Facebook again.
To Sum Up
To be safe from this problem, you need to comply with the Facebook terms and conditions. Always be in the safe zone, abide by the rules of security for using Facebook. Read and understand the rules. Be on guard for your account; look out for yourself, as Facebook is a public social platform where anyone can visit. Overall, a great deal of security is mainly for your safety as a user; its essential to Facebook.