An issue with Facebook’s SMS two-factor authentication is keeping a significant number of users locked out of their accounts.
The problem is users are not receiving text messages from Facebook which they need to verify ownership of their accounts.
Joe Youngblood, one of many users currently locked out, has been documenting the process of trying to regain access to his account.
He’s going on over 15 days of not being able to log in to Facebook:
Today is day 15 of not being able to access my Facebook account. In today’s world this could cripple a small business and make them close shop.
There is no excuse for not being able to help people locked out by a broken 2-factor process @fb_engineering you NEED to fix this!
— Joe Youngblood (@YoungbloodJoe) March 29, 2019
Despite many attempts of reaching out to Facebook about this issue, he has not received any help.
As mentioned, he’s not alone. With a quick search for “Facebook SMS” on Twitter you can find many other users locked out of their account for the same reason.
The faulty SMS two-factor authentication problem appears to be severely underreported even though it’s impacting users worldwide.
In an effort to raise awareness of the problem, Youngblood created the Twitter account @FacebookSMS2FA which contains a growing collection of retweets from users who are locked out of their accounts.
This problem could be especially detrimental for people who rely on Facebook to run their business.
For what it’s worth, Youngblood has a long-term history of buying Facebook ads, and that has not seemed to make a difference with regaining access to his account.
What’s also notable about this issue is that Facebook was in the news earlier this month for allowing users to be found using the phone number provided for two-factor authentication.
So not only is Facebook misusing users’ phone numbers, but it’s not even living up to its end of the deal by providing secure and reliable two-factor authentication.
With more users speaking up about the problem, will Facebook finally do something to correct it? We’ll have to wait and see.
