Facebook acknowledges glitch that blocks some user accounts

October 6, 2009 | Dean Takahashi | Comments |
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facebookFacebook acknowledged in the press today and on its help page that a technical problem is resulting in a “site maintenance” message for some users when they try to log into their accounts. The company says it is working on a fix and hopes to have the issue resolved soon.

One user said he tried to complain about the problem to Facebook and got the same reply from Facebook’s customer service over and over. The user was afraid that his page had been deleted altogether. Suffice it to say, it’s a problem when you have 300 million members and you can’t offer basic service.

facebook-2I tried to post an innocuous status update this evening about a story I wrote. Facebook wouldn’t let me, because it contained words that some members consider “abusive.” I can’t imagine what the words were. Then it shut down my account because of “suspicious activity.” I had to reactivate the account by changing my password. Then it let me back in. I don’t know if this is part of a wider problem, but clearly there’s some kind of robot in charge.

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Photo of Dean Takahashi

About the Author, Dean Takahashi

Dean is lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He covers video games, security, chips and a variety of other subjects. Dean previously worked at the San Jose Mercury News, the Wall Street Journal, the Red Herring, the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register and the Dallas Times Herald. He is the author of two books, Opening the Xbox and the Xbox 360 Uncloaked. Follow him on Twitter at @deantak, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • my facebok has run slow and not loaded properly for a long time, but im growing tired of people looking for responses such as " James has had the worst day"....then 50 people saying "oh babes whats a matter are you ok".....boring !!!
  • Edi
    It took FaceBook 3 days to even admit there was a problem, and then said it would be resolved within 24-hours. Those 24-hours have come and gone and still I have no access to Facebook (4, going on 5 days now!). But, if you check their Twitter page at http://twitter.com/facebook, they have the gall to boast about how they released new Apps today!! (see: http://bit.ly/17l2me ). Ugh!!!
  • Name
    I highly recommend everyone to file a Better Business Bureau report and mark the stars accordingly!

    http://sanjose.bbb.org/Business-Report/Facebook...
  • May be a glitch, or may be a strategy to reduce the activities on the site? The bandwidth is expensive, you know :-) and their business development people are not open for advises on new monetization alternatives -never return neither calls nor emails. The eyeballs are not everything, baby! Gotta monetize them! :-)
  • R
    I highly recommend everyone to file a Better Business Bureau report and mark the stars accordingly!

    http://sanjose.bbb.org/Business-Report/Facebook...
  • G
    New Facebook changes increased bugs blocking access to users accounts with maintenance issues since 10/23/09. See twitter and tweet words "Facebook" and "Maintenance". Why arent more media covering this in light of their new "look" launched last Friday? An increasing number of folks cannot access. Not fair, especially if Facebook email platform is proprietary.
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