With over 2.9 billion active users, Facebook deems it necessary to deploy security features that will help protect its users.
However, this has led to users getting locked out of their own accounts.
Is your Facebook account temporarily locked?
Then you have come to the right place.
In this article, we will discuss how to access your locked Facebook profile. Keep on reading!
Why Does Facebook Lock Accounts?
Before we dive right into how you can get back your account, let us try and understand why Facebook account temporarily locked your account anyway.
If you are an avid Facebook user, you must know how the platform has enriched our lives.
It has offered us a way to remain connected with the rest of the world with just our fingertips.
The massive database of Facebook enables users to be seen and heard by billions of other FB users around the globe.
This helps us to forge new relationships and maintain them.
But, with every blessing, comes a burden. As much as Facebook has helped billions of people to speak their minds on a platform, it has also attracted several spammers and hackers for the same reason.
These spammers wish to carry out malicious activities with the intention of stealing the vulnerable information of other users.
As a result, Facebook has put numerous security measures in place in order to mitigate some of these wrongdoings on its platform.
Any time Facebook suspects something wrong with an account, it attempts to lock it with the hope that it wouldn’t commit any further suspicious activity.
However, in that process, several innocent Facebook users get locked out of their accounts even if they haven’t done anything particularly wrong.
Hence, if you do get locked out of your Facebook account, it is imperative that you first understand what triggered it.
This makes it easier to get back your account. We will discuss some of the reasons below.
Reasons Why Your Facebook Account is Temporarily Locked
Even though Facebook is pretty strict when it comes to its security measures, it doesn’t just lock accounts out of nowhere.
We can only help you go through the reasons and solutions for your Facebook issue but it is up to you to figure out what you did that triggered FB to lock your account.
The simplest answer is that you violated Facebook’s rules and regulations.
The reason why we are asking you to figure out the cause behind your account getting locked is that it will help you to stay ahead of such problems in the future.
If you know the reason, you will be able to avoid these mistakes in the future and wouldn’t need to hunt the internet for answers to your Facebook issue.
Refer to the reasons listed below.
Clear Out Process
The Facebook platform is riddled with fake accounts and they are increasing by the day.
In an effort to close down some of these accounts, Facebook often runs a clear-out process where they lock or delete suspicious accounts.
When you are registering on Facebook, the site encourages you to provide your real name and photo.
However, many users do not wish to do that either for maintaining anonymity or just for humorous causes.
While the reasons why users usually do not put their legal name or their own photo on Facebook are justified, the platform aims to foster a social media community where all the users are genuine and do not pose a threat to any other user.
Hence, if you set up your account with a photo of a celebrity as your profile picture, if you put an incorrect date of birth, or if you created an account for a fictitious company or person, you have triggered Facebook to flag your account as suspicious and lock it under security reasons.
Conducting Illegal or Spam Activity
Many users turn to Facebook to promote their services or products. To some extent, that is completely fine.
After all, that is what Facebook is all about, right? Helping users to connect to a mass audience.
However, in the pursuit of promoting your services or products, if you post incessantly or send out way too many messages, you are basically cooking a recipe for getting locked out of your own account.
We have already established how serious Facebook is when it comes to protecting its users.
Hence, in case they detect that you have been using your account for bothering other users with your messages or posts, they will lock your account.
Facebook, like other social media websites, is responsible for its users’ security. So, why would it let you annoy its users by becoming a relentless spammer?
Neglecting Facebook Warnings
Even though FB is pretty strict with its security functions, it is still reasonable since the platform usually provides the users with warnings of possible account termination if the user doesn’t pay heed to the warnings.
Even then, some users do not feel the need of abiding by the warnings and end up getting their accounts locked by Facebook.
Suspicious Activities on Your Account
Facebook’s primary aim as a social media network, is to offer a safe platform where users can express their thoughts.
Naturally, when Facebook notices suspicious activities on your account, it assumes it to be hacked and locks it until it is confirmed that the account is secure.
The platform deems this instrumental in protecting the account’s security and privacy.
However, in the process, your account can end up getting locked even if it wasn’t hacked.
The activities that can trigger Facebook to believe that an account has been compromised are an increase in posting, incessant messaging, or link sharing, especially when an account is not that active.
Getting Too Much Social
Wait a minute…Facebook will lock my account if I get too social on it?
Isn’t that the whole point of the platform?
While it is true that Facebook encourages its users to post and communicate with other users, there is still a limit to it.
Users cannot excessively post or send out friend requests.
For instance, if you are a participant in more than 200 groups, your Facebook account is likely to get locked.
Similarly, if you exceed the limit of 5000 friends per account, your account will be flagged.
On the other hand, if you go ahead and accept more than 20 friend requests every day, you are likely to face the same consequences.
The platform has this pre-set limit owing to the fact that it helps them detect bots and/or spammers.
Something Offensive
As already mentioned, Facebook pushes itself as a platform where you can express your opinions or thoughts. And, that is still true.
However, when expressing your ideas or thoughts, you must be mindful of the fact of whether it is hurting someone else or not.
After all, Facebook aims to foster a harmonious community of users where everyone respects each other.
Hence, if you have posted something that is offensive or have sent out a personal message that isn’t particularly in good taste, your account runs the risk of getting locked.
Either the team on Facebook will notice your activity or someone else might report your account which will end up getting your account locked.
Unknown Location
One of the most stringent security measures of Facebook includes the platform monitoring the IP addresses of the users and keeping note of the devices they have logged in from.
In case you are trying to access your account from a different location or from a different device, Facebook can notice that and lock your account.
Usually, Facebook gives the user a notification informing them that they have detected unusual location activity and asking whether it’s them or not.
If the user doesn’t pay any notice to the warning and keeps on accessing their account from different locations or devices, their account might get locked with the error message, saying “We’ve locked your account because someone recently tried to log in from an unfamiliar location.”
Facebook Account Temporarily Locked: How to Unlock Your Account
Now that you are well familiar with the reasons behind your account getting locked, you must be wondering what to do to unlock your Facebook account.
We have listed a couple of solutions below. Refer to them and attempt to get your account back.
Wait For 48-96 Hours
The first solution is the easiest. All you have to do is wait around for at least 48 hours.
Sometimes Facebook locks your account for trivial reasons and unlocks it again after 2 or 3 days.
Hence, if you have been greeted with the error message that says, “For security reasons, your account is temporarily locked,” the best course of action is to wait around for a day or two before you attempt to do anything with your account since it can worsen the situation.
After 96 hours, go to your browser, clear the browser’s history and cache and attempt to log in to your Facebook account.
If you see that your account hasn’t been unlocked even after 3 days, it is probably because you have violated some serious regulations.
But, don’t worry, we have solutions for that as well.
Form of “Report a Login Issue”
If you are unable to log in to your Facebook account even after waiting for 96 hours, there is a solution to it.
Take help of the “Report a Login Issue” Form. You will be asked to provide your email address. Next, you need to elucidate the problem in detail.
Make sure to answer everything correctly – what you were doing when the problem occurred, what you expected to happen, and what actually happened.
Apart from these basic questions, you will also be asked to provide a screenshot of whatever message you are receiving from Facebook. A screenshot will let Facebook examine the situation properly.
After answering all the questions, send the form. Facebook will respond you within a maximum of 10 days.
Hence, be patient before you hear anything back from Facebook.
Facebook’s Account Appeal Form
If your account was disabled by Facebook for a mistake you don’t think you committed, you can ask the platform to review your account through their account appeal form.
Fill in the necessary details as asked.
You will need to provide your login email address or phone number, your full name (the same name that you have on your account), and your ID so that the platform can confirm your identity.
They accept both government and non-government IDs.
After you have filled out everything, submit the form and wait for Facebook to review your case and get back to you.
If you have managed to convince Facebook, they will give you back your account.
Moreover, they might also ask for further information so that they can review your case properly.
Approve Your Identity
Another form that you can take help of when trying to get back your Facebook account is the ID verification form.
If your account has been locked because of security reasons, you can appeal to Facebook by providing them with a copy of your ID with your login address or mobile number.
Facebook keeps the ID for around one year; but in case you’re not comfortable with this, you can alter it to thirty days by tapping the option of “Identity Confirmation Settings.”
After this, submit the form and wait so that Facebook can review your account.
If the site deems your case to be genuine and a mistake on their part, they will get back your account for you.
Prevent Account Locks
Once your Facebook account has been locked, getting it back is not an easy feat. You will need to fill out numerous forms and follow several steps before you can get back your account.
Hence, if you don’t want your account getting blocked anymore in the future, keep the pointers mentioned below in mind.
Follow Facebook’s Guidelines
If you don’t want your Facebook account getting locked out of nowhere, make sure to read the terms and conditions put forward by the platform and follow them.
Not following the regulations set by Facebook increases your chances of getting your account locked.
Do Not Use VPN
As mentioned previously, Facebook tends to lock your profile if they notice that you have been entering your account from different locations.
Hence, if you use a VPN and change your location every time you log in to your profile, your account runs the risk of getting locked.
Try not to use VPN and log in to the platform by using your real location.
Use strong Passwords
When setting up a social media account, one of the instrumental things that many users do not consider to be that important is using a difficult password.
If you use a difficult password, your Facebook account will be hard to hack and consequently, decreased chances of Facebook detecting suspicious activities on your account.
Remain Active
One of the best preventive measures to avoid locked accounts is to remain active on your Facebook account.
If you have a lot of friends on your Facebook account and regularly engage with them through posts and messages, you are more trustworthy in the eyes of Facebook.
However, if you have just opened an account on Facebook and do not remain active on it much, Facebook will assume it to be a bot account that you have established in order to irritate other users.
Consequently, the platform might disable your account.
