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Facebook Locks People Out of Accounts for Not Activating Protect Feature

The two-factor authentication system appears to be glitching.

Corinne Reichert Senior Editor
Corinne Reichert (she/her) grew up in Sydney, Australia and moved to California in 2019. She holds degrees in law and communications, and currently writes news, analysis and features for CNET across the topics of electric vehicles, broadband networks, mobile devices, big tech, artificial intelligence, home technology and entertainment. In her spare time, she watches soccer games and F1 races, and goes to Disneyland as often as possible.
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  • I've been covering technology and mobile for 12 years, first as a telecommunications reporter and assistant editor at ZDNet in Australia, then as CNET's West Coast head of breaking news, and now in the Thought Leadership team.
Corinne Reichert
facebook-protect-locked.png

The message some Facebook users are seeing when locked out of their accounts.

CNET

If you're wondering why you can't get into your Facebook account today, the social media giant is locking out some users who were required to activate Facebook Protect with two-factor authentication by the March 17 deadline.

"Turn on Facebook Protect to unlock your account," the notification says. "Account locked on March 17, 2022. We've taken this precaution to keep your account secure while you enable additional security measures."

However, some users who had enabled the additional security measure still found themselves locked out of their accounts Friday. Others who hadn't requested Facebook Protect were also locked out, with some experiencing tech issues in getting a code sent to their phones.

Facebook parent company Meta in December announced it'd begin requiring higher-risk users to protect their accounts using two-factor authentication.

Facebook Protect is offered to high-profile users of the platform, such as journalists, government officials, human rights activists and those with a higher-reach following who may be more likely to be targeted by hacking attempts. By December, around 1.5 million accounts had enabled Facebook Protect.

"We're continuing to improve the enrollment process and notifications to avoid confusion and will keep iterating," Nathaniel Gleicher, head of security policy at Meta, tweeted late Friday. "We're looking into isolated examples where people may need help enrolling in the program."