Disclaimer: The views and opinions stated in this podcast are just that, one person’s views and opinions shared freely on the internet while exercising the freedom of speech guaranteed in the United States Constitution.
In today's podcast, I talk about how Facebook is holding my email address hostage by allowing someone that has fraudulently signed up for an account using my email address to continue using it with reckless abandon!
This is a really good example of a company that uses a variety of underhanded tactics to keep from being contacted, and there's irony in the fact that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is a proponent of so many "open policies" in terms of making everyone's information available to the world, yet Facebook itself employs a variety of means to insure that you can't find out any information about contacting their company directly.
Feel free to click on the podcast in the player below, or read the following for my "rant":
More than a month ago, someone in some African country, fraudulently used one of my email accounts and signed up for a Facebook account. Facebook, somehow let them continue to keep this account, and move forward without them having access to my account to do whatever confirmations that were necessary, and this person continues to get notification messages sent to my account.
It’s clear from the messages that I’m receiving, that the person who signed up for this account, knows that they did so on a fraudulently obtained email address, because they keep adding friends, participating in a variety of different Facebook activities, and notifications of such activities keeps getting sent to my email address.
I have tried to find some way to contact Facebook and let them know that this is the wrong email, but any email address I can find, does not work, or says it’s been discontinued and that I should refer to their Frequently Asked Questions page, but the Frequently Asked Questions page doesn’t lead you to a resolution, it just takes you into an endless loop of questions that don’t really answer your query.
I’ve even gone so far as to search out other means to contact the company Facebook and get my email account removed from their service and get them to take note of this issue and rectify it, but all attempts at this have failed, because as probably the largest company for having everyone’s account information and details, and with a CEO like Mark Zuckerberg who is infamously known for wanting everyone’s information to be public and for things to be transparent, Facebook itself is very secretive and shady when it comes to showing you how you can get in touch with someone that can get an issue resolved within their company.
They have an INTENTIONAL system of checks and balances that insures that you can’t find a real live person who can take ownership of an issue and see that it gets fixed and this is showing just ONE MORE REASON why Facebook and all the information they hold is a very dangerous threat to people and companies throughout the globe.
And to be clear, I do have a Facebook account, so that’s how I say confidently that the person who is fraudulently using my other email account is doing so with the full knowledge that they shouldn’t be! Every time you log into Facebook, you have to give your email and password, and there’s NO WAY that someone can mistakenly enter an email address that isn’t theirs time after time, week after week, and continue to add friends and events and all sorts of other things via the Facebook interface!
Now we see how Facebook can tout that it has "500 million users", it’s holding innocent people’s email addresses hostage to build up its numbers! Yes, Facebook has allowed someone to STEAL my email address and use it fraudulently for SEVERAL MONTHS, and they won’t even allow ME, the OWNER OF THE EMAIL ADDRESS any means of recourse for reporting this issue besides creating this podcast and blog post about it!
And by the way, Facebook does NOT have 500 million users. They probably have about 300 million users (which is still a vast number) but the 500 number is inflated, as I guarantee you at huge percentage of the 300 million I mentioned have multiple accounts, and I’m not just talking about the ones who have been given additional fraudulent accounts the way that I have.
My next step is to look into what government agencies are supposed to regulate Facebook and their activities, because I suspect that this situation is allowed to continue at Facebook because it relates to some other fraudulent or illegal activities, and Facebook is merely choosing to turn a blind eye to it now, since it doesn’t negatively effect their bottom line at this point to see that the issue gets rectified.
So, with that said, in closing, I’d like to say once again: FACEBOOK IS HOLDING MY EMAIL ACCOUNT HOSTAGE, and I would like for this person’s account to be deleted, or at the very least have my email address removed from their account, since it was used illegally, and is continuing to be used without my consent!
Also, Facebook needs to change their policies for people signing up for accounts, because I clicked the link they gave for “if you did not sign up for an account at this email address”, but it didn’t work! As did none of the other links in their Frequently Asked Questions page that deal with this topic. Then, since there is no “Contact Us” page, or way to get in touch with the company, or someone that oversees these problems, there’s no means of recourse on my end except for the internet.
So hopefully, the people that work at Facebook are megalomaniacal enough to have “Google Alerts” set up about their name, and sooner or later they’ll see this message, and contact me, and give me my email address back! Or, perhaps Anderson Cooper will just be perusing the internet, come across this site and post, and do a major story on CNN about this issue. I’m certain if it’s happening to me, it’s happening to MANY other people as well. This is fraudulent behavior that is unfortunately continuing unchecked!
Where is the Facebook police?!
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