It may be a worrying reflection highlighting the extent of how important our Facebook accounts have become to us, but one woman in the UK has just legally changed her name, so she could keep her account.
Jemma Rogers set up her account in 2008, but like many people, she understandably opted to use an online pseudonym to avoid unwanted friend requests, and to make it harder for people to find her online. So, amusingly (at the time) she set her name to Jemmaroid Von Laalaa.
But 7 years down the line and Facebook are still actively enforcing their controversial “real name policy” that has received plenty of criticism from various groups including drag performers and native Americans. Jemma received a message from Facebook asking her to prove that she was really named Jemmaroid Von Laalaa.
However Jemma’s photoshop skills were not good enough to fool the brains over at Facebook HQ, and after submitting an edited version of her bank card, Jemma’s Facebook account was locked.
Well now Jemma Rogers is officially Jemmaroid Von Laalaa after getting her name legally changed by deed poll. Just so she could access her Facebook account once again.
“I know I’ve been a completely moron, but Facebook are being ridiculous,” Von Laalaa said. “I’ve been locked out of my account for five weeks now and have lost all of my photos, messages and precious memories.”
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It’s one of a growing number of examples of how important our Facebook accounts have become to us and how Facebook’s lack of any real customer support doesn’t really offset this dependence, leading to plenty of disruption.
Jemmaroid’s account had remained locked for some time after changing her name but Facebook have since reactivated it.
Jemmaroid Von Laalaa may have gone to extreme lengths to reclaim her account but her incident is a good demonstration showing how important our Facebook accounts are to us since they contain many memories, including photos, videos and messages.
However Facebook can be – like in this case – quite the pain, especially when you need to get a hold of them, which for many people is practically impossible. Thus it is prudent to always undertake certain precautions to ensure that you do not rely too heavily on your account.
This can include backing up important conversations with other people, often by simply copying and pasting the text into a Word document. Always make sure that any photos and videos you’ve uploaded onto your account are backed up on your computer or phone. Also, if you are the admin to a Group or Page, always give a trusted friend admin privileges too, so if you lose the account you don’t lose the Group or Page as well.
What lengths would you go to to reclaim your Facebook account and what would you miss the most if you couldn’t?