Unconfirmed reports are sweeping across the Internet as thousands of female Facebook users complain that their accounts have been inexplicably disabled. Users have taken to Twitter with complaints that their accounts are no longer accessible, and no accounts owned by male Facebook users seem to be affected. The Facebook users, who do not appear to have violated Facebook’s terms of use, are seeing messages that their accounts are “inauthentic.” It is currently not known if a bug or attack is responsible for the disabled accounts, though some users claim they are being asked to scan and upload a copy of a valid driver’s license in order to reactivate their accounts. If the claims are true, it almost certainly means Facebook is currently under attack. If your account is disabled and you are asked to scan and upload a copy of your driver’s license, this request should most certainly be ignored and reported to privacy@facebook.com. Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
UPDATE: A BGR commenter has posted the full account reactivation instructions users are seeing when their accounts are disabled:
Please upload a government-issued ID to this report and make sure that your full name, date of birth, and photo are clear. You should also black out any personal information that is not needed to verify your identity (e.g., social security number).
If you do not have access to a scanner, a digital image of your photo ID will be accepted as well. Rest assured that we will permanently delete your ID from our servers once we have used it to verify the authenticity of your account.
Again — if your account was affected, please do not follow any instructions like the ones above until Facebook has verified that these account deactivations are not the result of an attack.
UPDATE 2: Facebook has responded to BGR‘s request for comment.
Thanks Brian, and everyone else who sent this in!
