Things To Consider When Using Social Networks To Log In To Online Services

I know that we all love simplicity. Having to create a user login for so many of the sites that we frequent can be such a pain and it’s so easy to just click in, perform a few taps, and you’ve avoided the signup routine, however, what happens if your social media account gets hacked?

I've always thought about this and figured that I'll probably always be on Facebook so what does it matter, until you get that friend request acceptance that you never sent, and suddenly Facebook shuts you down for breaking their terms of service.

(I don’t even have a passport, let alone ever left the United States.)

A quick password change and a confirmation code sent to your phone number that you never receive, and you're pretty much locked out of any service tied to the social network until you can get it resolved. (I'm currently locked out of my account for 24 hours until I can request another confirmation code... IF I ever get one.)

To test, I tried logging in to my web hosting where I use Facebook to log in to the service at Hostinger. Sure enough, locked out of my hosting account.

15 years of data, potentially lost, follow-ups with countless services that I've tied to my Facebook account, time spent out of my 4th of July weekend because I tied one service to many accounts.

It's time to reconsider those few minutes spent creating individual accounts on 3rd party services or apps compared to losing complete access to 30-40% of them because of one account that has no human customer support behind the service, nor does the system allow any explanations of your situation for human review. One site, one forgotten password, data loss, loss of your money. (You’ll have to repurchase all of those Oculus apps under your new profile should you decide to ever deal with Facebook again.)

UPDATE: I still remain in Facebook jail.

I did receive one initial confirmation text via my Google Voice number, which I use as my main number, but anything after that, that Facebook required and sent, I never received a code. Fortunately, with Google Voice, you always have your main mobile carrier's phone number accessible as well, so I was given the option to change my number, then receive a confirmation number there.

Still no go!

After about 48 hours of being locked out, as opposed to 24 like they said, I decided to try to use my wife's number for the confirmation phone number and she received it. I then got the following message. No opportunity to explain why my account, being hacked, broke the terms of service. No human to talk to. No explanation portion on the form. Nothing.

People may laugh and think, "what's the big deal? It's just Facebook", but what happens when your business (not particularly mine, but theoretically) is tied to a hacked account that you can't get back into--your business Facebook page--your customers? Ordinarily you would have a customer support center to relay the situation to, but on Facebook you don't.

Or, on a personal level, every single service that I used Facebook to log into is SHUT DOWN. I can't get into my Oculus Quest account, can't get into my web hosting account, Instagram, and every other service that I used Facebook to sign up for (there are tons).

Should I gain access to my Facebook account I'll do my best to disassociate every single sign-on account I have using Facebook and either create one using Twitter, since they actually have human support, or, more likely, create usernames and passwords for each individual service.

I'm officially done with single sign-on (SSO).

UPDATE: To make things worse. My Wordpress dashboard just crashed and I can’t log into my hosting to troubleshoot the issue in the database, restore from backup, or reinstall Wordpress because… you guessed it, I can’t sign in to my hosting through Facebook.

I can only post from the Wordpress app on my phone since it apparently uses the Wordpress API.