Guide How to get on Facebook and Instagram
This is how you might get in.
Here, but no further. Many people struggle with the fact that the verification SMS from Facebook never arrives.
KameraFinn Jarle Kvalheim, Tek.no
– I still can’t access Messenger or Facebook. I can’t get any further than for them to send me a code via SMS.
One reader writes to our tip inbox, and is far from alone.
Facebook and Instagram collapsed on Tuesday night Norwegian time and users all over the world struggled to access the services. Despite the fact that Meta, the owner of the two popular social media, reported that the problems were being resolved 18:07 Tuesday eveningthere are still many who struggle to access the services.
– After yesterday’s downtime, I can’t access my accounts. I have uploaded the ID and had this approved, but am then told that information about recovery has been sent by email, which it has not. Nor do I get security codes sent by SMS, which they say they send, says another reader.
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Therefore, there are probably still problems
The reason why you are not getting in is probably due to a huge backlog of verification SMS that Meta has problems handling. As their problems were global, and they have over two billion daily users, there are potentially an extremely large number of verification messages to be sent out.
Even if it were only a fraction of the users who would have to be sent an SMS, there could be several hundred million messages to be sent out. Almost simultaneously.
You can do this
Let’s pull the Band-Aid off hard and fast: If you’re one of those who can’t get in, there’s probably not much you can do except wait.
Especially if you were among those who accepted the request to change your password when the downtime started, it may take some time to get back. A great many of Meta’s total user base probably try to use the same solutions to gain access to their accounts.
These solutions were never designed to serve the entire user base at once. It will be a bit like the whole of Norway waiting in the Taxi queue in Oslo night to Sunday.
Hope #1: Maybe you have your account in a drawer?
If you have not changed your code for Meta’s products, you can try to look for an older logged-in device in a drawer or under a sofa. For example, if you have a phone that has recently been changed or a tablet that is rarely used, these may still be logged in.
Only gadgets that tried to access while Meta was down are “kicked out”.
As an emergency solution, you may already have the access you need to the Meta services here.
Hope #2: Accept the login from another gadget
You can approve other login attempts from another logged-in device if you have one. For example, a tablet or a computer.
But be aware that Meta’s account security is complicated and does not always work as expected.
If you do not let in immediately after you have approved, you should try to close the Meta app you are trying to log in to manually – and start it again.
If the login was approved by you on the device that still has access, you should be allowed in on second attempts.
Hope #3: Kill the Messenger
We are aware that many people are struggling to access Messenger, even if the other Meta services are up and running. Again, this may be related to complications on the service side.
A tip that will often work is; if you get logged into your Meta account on Facebook or Instagram – you can manually close and open the Messenger app again.
Normally, Messenger should inherit login details from the other Meta apps, thus letting you in.
PS: Otherwise, we never recommend quacking messengers.
Hope #4: Sign in with Google Authenticator
This requires that you have set one up other two-step solution BEFORE you were kicked out, so this probably doesn’t apply to many people. But the first time you set up two-step verification, you were asked whether you wanted to use SMS as verification or a third-party app, such as Google Authenticator.
If you chose the latter, it should be a simple matter to open up Google Authenticator, get a verification code and log in with it.
Was Facebook hacked?
When Facebook and Instagram went down around the world yesterday, many wondered if there could be something more that could be behind it. But for now there is nothing to indicate that it is anything more than “ordinary” technical problems.
– Facebook has a long history of falling down, and there could be a long list of reasons to blame. It is highly unlikely that it is a cyber attack, but it can never be completely ruled out, says Jake Moore, global security consultant at ESET to Forbes.
The same was the opinion of Kai Roer, general manager of Praxis Security Labs, who told VG that he believes there are several possible reasons why Meta had major problems. Roer was most surprised by the duration of the downtime:
– A service like Facebook will normally be built in an extremely resilient way, so normally I would think that no more than a few minutes should pass when an error has occurred. This has lasted for close to an hour, which suggests that this could be much rougher than that.
After the downtime, security experts in Cisco’s “ThousandEyes” team have analyzed the situation, and they also can’t see any signs that an attack was to blame.
They say the downtime appears to be due to one of Meta’s “backend” services, such as authentication.
– ThousandEyes confirms that Meta’s online services remained available during the period, and that network paths and services responded as expected to user requests. However, users who attempted to log in were met with error messages, suggesting that an error in a backend service, such as authentication, is the cause of the downtime, the researchers write on ThousandEyes’ blog.
Meta has still not said anything about the reason behind the downtime, other than that they had “technical problems”.