Facebook Protect is an advanced security program that Meta designed for its main social network, to protect its most exposed users. Its implementation is mandatory in the accounts that the platform considers to be more susceptible to being hacked, such as those of politicians, journalists or human rights activists.
However, it has become a headache for many people. It is that those chosen for the program who did not activate this extra layer of protection manually before the deadline, are running into the inability to re-enter your profiles. And part of the responsibility for this happening is on Facebook itself, or the way it has chosen to communicate the launch of this feature.
Facebook has chosen to inform users about Facebook Protect through a super generic email message that looks, at a minimum, suspicious. We are talking about an e-mail whose content gives a lot of vibe of spamwhich is even enhanced by the title: “Your account requires advanced security from Facebook Protect”.
And although the communication is legitimate, many users have dismissed it thinking that it could be a typical attempt to phishing. After all, fake emails supposedly coming from Facebook are much more frequent than any user would prefer. The truth is that, when the time limit established by the platform to activate this function has expired, many users are now paying the consequences.
TheVerge reports that by these hours the complaints on Twitter of those people who have lost access to their profiles have multiplied. Is that, apparently, the methods to recover the login using the additional verification methods (SMS or Google Authenticator) are not working properly.
Facebook Protect is not necessarily something new; in fact, the social network ad that it would expand its reach to more countries at the beginning of last December. However, every time the feature reaches new users, there are repeated complaints about the number of people who do not pay due attention to the notifications and end up losing access to the Meta platform.
Personally, I happened to receive the notification to activate Facebook Protect in early November 2021. The message indicated that, weeks later, access to my account would be blocked if I did not comply with the mandatory action to activate it.
As it has happened to many, the email generated mistrust in me. That is why I decided to enter the Facebook application in search of any reference to Facebook Protect; that way I wanted to corroborate that it was something legitimate. Fortunately, on the main screen of the app a banner appeared that urged me to comply with what was indicated in the e-mail.
Therefore, it is likely that those who dismissed the Facebook email have also done the same with the poster within the social network itself. By this I mean that those who lost access to their account surely have a part of the responsibility in this story.
In any case, it is clear that Mark Zuckerberg’s company could have chosen a better method to report on Facebook Protect; it was through a notification push in the app, or with an email in a format that would not arouse so many suspicions of phishing or spam.