Users recovering deactivated Facebook accounts

Many people are recovering access to their Facebook accounts, after they were deactivated within the last few days as part of a drive against fake accounts. The accounts were recovered after submitting documents as per Facebook's requirements. Talking to the Dhaka Tribune on Monday, Shaporan Haque, a Facebook user who lives in Dhaka, said: “A friend of mine, on Saturday, informed me that my Facebook account has been deactivated and he cannot access my profile. “Later on Sunday evening, I received an SMS on my phone containing a security code from Facebook. I just used the short code to recover my account successfully.” Meanwhile, many other users got back their accounts in similar ways, with some needing a scanned copy of their national identity card (NID). Social media giant Facebook started blocking fake accounts in Bangladesh from Friday, without any prior notification to the account holders. Many genuine Facebook accounts were also blocked or deactivated during the process. On Sunday, the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) said it would help genuine Facebook users with reactivating their accounts. However, as of Monday, the regulatory commission has not started any process to help the affected Facebook users. Seeking anonymity, an official of the regulator told the Dhaka Tribune that the Bangladesh government cannot do anything to help anyone with their lost account as the decisions are being taken solely by Facebook under their policy. Welcoming Facebook’s initiative to deactivate fake accounts, Tarana Halim, state minister for Posts and Telecommunication, on Sunday said Facebook had started the process as per its earlier assurances to the Bangladesh government. On March 30, Tarana Halim held a meeting with Facebook officials in Singapore where the latter assured her that the fake accounts would be blocked. In her blog post, Shabnam Sheikh, programme manager of the technical team (protect and care) of Facebook, said the social networking site took the initiative to block fake accounts in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and a few other countries as a large number of fake likes and comments were coming from them. Facebook authorities also blocked 30,000 fake accounts in France ahead of its presidential polls, set to be held on April 23.