Anyone else use Facebook and had problems getting f-ed off despite doing no wrong doing? ☠️

I've been on FB since 2006, used to get in touch with long lost friends, on 25th January I got shut down by FB! I'd done nothing wrong but they say it's because of my business account! I don't even have a business account, just use FB for social & domestic pleasure, they asked me for evidence that I'm real by providing photos & other proof of ID, they went through but ever since the 25th I'm not getting no updates on my appeal, reading on the net FB/META has been removing millions of fake/spam accounts from around the world, usually being lots of 10 million each go, this has been going off for two years now, I suppose it was just a matter of time before my name was drawn out the hat, I wouldn't be too bothered about going back on but I've got hundreds of personal photos, so if I can't get back on, then I've lost the entire lot...... Loads say once the suspension is in place you'll never get back on FB, so best to just move on and forget the place.

Ian, you submitted an appeal
ON 25 JANUARY 2026
Check back here for the result.
Your account is not visible to people on Facebook and you can't use it.
What happens next?
It usually takes us just over a day to review your information.
If we find that your account does follow our Community Standards, you'll be able to use Facebook again.
If we find that your account doesn't follow our Community Standards, it will be permanently disabled and you won't be able to appeal again.

1 hour ago, Ian Lanc said:

Anyone else use Facebook and had problems getting f-ed off despite doing no wrong doing? ☠️

I've been on FB since 2006, used to get in touch with long lost friends, on 25th January I got shut down by FB! I'd done nothing wrong but they say it's because of my business account! I don't even have a business account, just use FB for social & domestic pleasure, they asked me for evidence that I'm real by providing photos & other proof of ID, they went through but ever since the 25th I'm not getting no updates on my appeal, reading on the net FB/META has been removing millions of fake/spam accounts from around the world, usually being lots of 10 million each go, this has been going off for two years now, I suppose it was just a matter of time before my name was drawn out the hat, I wouldn't be too bothered about going back on but I've got hundreds of personal photos, so if I can't get back on, then I've lost the entire lot...... Loads say once the suspension is in place you'll never get back on FB, so best to just move on and forget the place.

Ian, you submitted an appeal
ON 25 JANUARY 2026
Check back here for the result.
Your account is not visible to people on Facebook and you can't use it.
What happens next?
It usually takes us just over a day to review your information.
If we find that your account does follow our Community Standards, you'll be able to use Facebook again.
If we find that your account doesn't follow our Community Standards, it will be permanently disabled and you won't be able to appeal again.

That looks like what X (Twitter) did to me although I could get it back if I pay an ongoing fee, nothing from Facebook yet.

18 minutes ago, Tizer said:

That looks like what X (Twitter) did to me although I could get it back if I pay an ongoing fee, nothing from Facebook yet.

I've heard similar asking for a fee before being let back in, all with business accounts, thousands of complaints by the ones who have no such businesses, It's a joke

Well a month on and I had another message from Facebook! Asking me to submit even further evidence that I'm a real person and not a fake person or bot person! All the crap that goes on Facebook and they still demand more evidence from me....What a joke that shuts an innocent person down but allows sponsored p*orn & fake cash links on their marketplace.

I shut down and fully deleted all social media accounts two years ago.

Never looked back

8 minutes ago, DaveT70 said:

I shut down and fully deleted all social media accounts two years ago.

My intentions are to hopefully get back on then remove all my family albums, I've literally hundreds of photos I want back, then leave FB.

Since not being on FB I'm enjoying the TV more are chatting and playing with the dog, also I'm spending more time making my plastic models.

I would miss Facebook Marketplace if I had to leave Facebook, I've bought lots of good quality second hand things from there for very reasonable prices.

Vaguely on topic - almost every day I find a message in my junk folder purportedly from Facebook, advising that someone has attempted to log in to my account, and requesting I verify my details. I have never had an account, so an obvious fishing scam. Some of these messages are clearly rubbish, some look quite convincing.

1 hour ago, Eric Bloodaxe said:

I have never had an account, so an obvious fishing scam. Some of these messages are clearly rubbish, some look quite convincing.

My missus has never been on or used or signed up for FB but she'll get a notification on her phone every month that she has a FB message or someone has tried to login, she just deletes them as we all know it's a scam.....Too much scamming going off these days and now with AI it will get worse.

5 minutes ago, Ian Lanc said:

My missus has never been on or used or signed up for FB but she'll get a notification on her phone every month that she has a FB message or someone has tried to login, she just deletes them as we all know it's a scam.....Too much scamming going off these days and now with AI it will get worse.

My mum in her late 80s gets regular phone calls from 'Amazon' saying her account has been compromised. She doesn't 't even have the internet 🤣 She just places the phone down on the table, let's them prattle on, and makes herself a cuppa...

6 minutes ago, StephenFord said:

My mum in her late 80s gets regular phone calls from 'Amazon' saying her account has been compromised. She doesn't 't even have the internet 🤣 She just places the phone down on the table, let's them prattle on, and makes herself a cuppa...

We have supermarket royalty cards, one for tesco & one for morrisons, sometimes wished we'd never signed up for the crap, I found out every time the royalty card is used the supermarket pass on/sell our details to interested parties/business's, that's where the masses of junk cold callers & junk mail come from.

1 hour ago, Ian Lanc said:

We have supermarket royalty cards, one for tesco & one for morrisons, sometimes wished we'd never signed up for the crap, I found out every time the royalty card is used the supermarket pass on/sell our details to interested parties/business's, that's where the masses of junk cold callers & junk mail come from.

Try going into your account online, you can often opt out of many marketing preferences.When doing business on the phone I always ask to be opted out of 'marketing' in preferences...

57 minutes ago, StephenFord said:

Try going into your account online, you can often opt out of many marketing preferences.When doing business on the phone I always ask to be opted out of 'marketing' in preferences...

I'll give that a go.....Thanks.

2 hours ago, Ian Lanc said:

We have supermarket royalty cards, one for tesco & one for morrisons, sometimes wished we'd never signed up for the crap, I found out every time the royalty card is used the supermarket pass on/sell our details to interested parties/business's, that's where the masses of junk cold callers & junk mail come from.

Where did you get that info from? I've got Tesco & Sainsburys cards used regularly and never get any spam emails.

Never used facebook except maybe a couple of days after many years to see what the fuss was about and saw first hand it was just as vapid and pointless as I had imagined it to be. I never 'got it' that there is no useful data being shared you are just sharing your 'life' which apparently is supposed to be the useful data.

Had awful run ins like you describe with reddit though which I used for some years sadly to my great frustration due to ridiculous global karma system which will ghost you on the whole site if you get one or two downvotes if one or two disapprove of a post of yours on some totally unrelated subreddit, which gives you a permanent destruction of your whole account in some cases if you are a new user.

After swearing myself off that place I came back to more classic forums like this where people behave somewhat more amicably though still with their fair share of trolls on many.

Between the extreme automods and the nasty users social media is a curse.

I am currently learning how to host my own forums for the topics I haven't found communities for to get away from those monolith mega corps and their draconian rules and regulations.

Another plague on the internet is cloudflare captcha which has come to dominate the market in just a couple of years. As I use mobile internet with shared IPs I am quite regularly blocked from sites which use that captcha in their 'net' with an infinite page load as they must deem my activity 'none human'. Internet has gotten more and more like this in the past years with checking points everywhere with countless hoops to access communities before you even get to interact and often not at all as you are turned away at the door. Feels like trying to get into exclusive nightclubs in your average large city.

Still some smaller forums which are like the good old days though, which is what I seek out now.

4 hours ago, Tizer said:

I would miss Facebook Marketplace if I had to leave Facebook, I've bought lots of good quality second hand things from there for very reasonable prices.

I'm sure it is a smaller market but gumtree I have found decent. Yea I know you don't have any protection there either as buyer or seller but I prefer that to the heavy handed and super weighted protection for buyers on ebay, which is why I quit that after getting ripped off twice for clear manipulation of the system as they knew they would get away with it and they did.

There are professionals on there who will buy products and do 'Item Not As Described' claims where you know full well there was nothing wrong with the product and then they demand money off or that you bend over backwards to send it back to you at your cost. Ebay will just default to the buyer because it is easier for them at scale as they know most sellers will still come because the buyers are there. Disgusting way to do things but that is the same mega corp idea that never mind about the collateral damage as long as most are happy.

I prefer gumtree where both parties are equally exposed. :) It is at least fair then.

1 hour ago, TomsFocus said:

Where did you get that info from?

It's well known Tom, Also no end of times when we've got the vouchers we go to cash them in only for them to have been used up 'somewhere', voucher being void, this has happened to my son too.

https://www.google.com/search?q=tesco+royalty+cards+scams&oq=tesco+royalty+cards+scams&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCjE1NDkyajBqMTWoAgiwAgHxBXLOTgpWRGc28QVyzk4KVkRnNg&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

1 hour ago, Ian Lanc said:

It's well known Tom, Also no end of times when we've got the vouchers we go to cash them in only for them to have been used up 'somewhere', voucher being void, this has happened to my son too.

https://www.google.com/search?q=tesco+royalty+cards+scams&oq=tesco+royalty+cards+scams&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCjE1NDkyajBqMTWoAgiwAgHxBXLOTgpWRGc28QVyzk4KVkRnNg&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

That is very strange. Honestly never heard of it with Tesco cards. I've had one for nearly 20 years now.

The latest 'scam' I'd heard about was the daft prices for anyone without a loyalty card. (Not strictly a scam).

I have difficulty spending my vouchers as I can't into stores, so have to screenshot them for someone to else to use, but have never found any that don't work so far.

I did get around £300s worth of Nectar points stolen last year. But that's just done by a computer trying various combinations of numbers until they find a real one. I got the points back reasonably easy. And Nectar have since changed their app, so you can 'lock' points, to prevent the same computer hack being used now.

1 hour ago, TomsFocus said:

I did get around £300s worth of Nectar points stolen last year.

Nothing is safe nowadays ☠️ year by year tech scammers get more & more cleverer ☹️

11 hours ago, Ian Lanc said:

Nothing is safe nowadays ☠️ year by year tech scammers get more & more cleverer ☹️

On the topic of scams my mum got the 'hi mum' scam attempt the other year. She had the good sense to ask me in person to confirm it was me before taking any action which I said no and we then, once I looked it up, learned of the name of the scam being 'hi mum'. https://www.ybs.co.uk/savings/guides/hi-mum-scams-how-to-spot-and-avoid-them

It is where they send out mass texts with as you can guess 'hi mum' in the text under the auspices of being a child who has broken their phone so using this unrecognized phone requesting money to be sent to an account.

4 hours ago, anotherforduser said:

On the topic of scams my mum got the 'hi mum' scam attempt the other year. She had the good sense to ask me in person to confirm it was me before taking any action which I said no and we then, once I looked it up, learned of the name of the scam being 'hi mum'. https://www.ybs.co.uk/savings/guides/hi-mum-scams-how-to-spot-and-avoid-them

It is where they send out mass texts with as you can guess 'hi mum' in the text under the auspices of being a child who has broken their phone so using this unrecognized phone requesting money to be sent to an account.

Wouldn't work on my mum, she doesn't have a mobile phone, she's a very wise woman 😄

.

What a coincidence, I just this minute got a scam call - 'silent' and I immediately hung up was so angry, as it woke my partner up who is recovering fro an operation and was delighted to see her have a lie in, till those b*stard scammers called. I know it's unlikely but if you get a call from, 0148 0710791 blow a very loud whistle down the phone at the scumbags!!

5 hours ago, anotherforduser said:

It is where they send out mass texts with as you can guess 'hi mum' in the text under the auspices of being a child who has broken their phone so using this unrecognized phone requesting money to be sent to an account.

My missus has had three of these texts, every time my missus nearly falling for it, telling her to text the daughter instead and ask her, seconds later...''no mum not lost my phone its a scam so block the number''

1 hour ago, StephenFord said:

Wouldn't work on my mum, she doesn't have a mobile phone, she's a very wise woman 😄

It wouldn't work on me too! I've no mobile and never will become one of these zombie users, typing away on an old laptop.