Kim Schmidt Photography LLC | Northern Virgina Family Photographer

I woke up Friday morning to two emails from Facebook saying that my account was disabled. I seriously thought it was a spam email and went to log in to see if it was true. That photo above is what it tells me when I try to login. Unfortunately my account no longer shows up in the search and with that it took my business Facebook page. Utterly devastated doesn’t even seem to describe how I’m feeling right now. I probably shouldn’t be on google, looking at others experiences (ranging from their account deleted forever to getting it restored after a few weeks). I’ve been a faithful member of Facebook since 2005, my last semester in college. I have never once posted something obscene on my wall or violated their rules of conduct. But apparently via their FAQ page, I’m being accused as an “inauthentic” imposter. Oh, Facebook, in your crappy ways! I wish that they would do more investigating into something like this before deactivating an account. Though I haven’t heard back from Facebook, I know exactly how this happened – someone (whom shall remain nameless but I know exactly who he is) reported me as being fraudulent. It blows when all it takes to get your account deactivated is ONE single person to report you.

Thanks a lot Facebook for sucking myself and millions of users across the globe into your social media world and not caring one ounce about any of us.

A few words of advice for everyone out there – BACK UP your profile. Here are the directions that I took directly from the Facebook Help Center. It’s been a long time since I did this and I’m just praying that my entire account will be in tact once they look at my drivers license and see I’m a real person.

1. Clickat the top right of any Facebook page and select Account Settings
2. Click General in the left-hand column
3. Click on “Download a copy of your Facebook data”
4. Click Start My Archive

Other piece of advice, if you are an admin for a Page (i.e. business page), make sure to have one other person an admin. I remember someone else mentioning this awhile back and should have immediately made Anthony an admin. I believe that since I was the only admin, they removed my business page too.

I’m just praying that I will get an email from Facebook very soon saying my profile and business page are back. That’s really all I want.

UPDATE: As of Monday January 14th late evening, my account and business page were reactivated. The email I received was short and sweet saying everything should still be there. It was a relief to get that email, after stopping for gas on my way home from a newborn workshop in the DC area.