Why Users Were Logged Out Of Facebook & What To Do If You Can’t Log In

Many Facebook users found themselves unexpectedly logged out on Friday night and Saturday morning, causing confusion and consternation. After acknowledging the issue at the time, Facebook provided an update to say that it had been resolved just under six hours later. However, some users are continuing to report that they are unable to access their accounts.

Facebook is no stranger to outages of one sort or other. Coincidentally, it suffered a significant disruption around this time last year, while an outage in March 2019 left it and its subsidiary Instagram inaccessible to many for up to 14 hours. The current issues are unusual as, instead of the service or content within it simply not loading, users have found themselves unable to get into it.

Facebook flagged that it had been receiving reports of users having been logged out and needing to log back in at 1.30am ET on Saturday, January 23. It noted that it was trying to resolve the issue and thanked users for their patience. At 7.06am, it provided an update stating that a “configuration change” had been to blame for the problem and thanking the engineers involved for fixing it. However, the lighthearted tone of the update and its riff on the ‘So Facebook’ trend that had cropped up on Twitter as a result of the issue may not have gone down well with the numerous users who were continuing to report that they were still unable to access their accounts. Indeed, at the time of writing, some users are still complaining that they can not regain access.

Facebook’s Login Recommendations

It was variously reported that the worst affected users were those trying to access Facebook via the iOS app. With that in mind, for users continuing to report problems, Facebook has been sharing a link to a troubleshooting page for iOS users on its website titled ‘I can’t log in to Facebook.’ The page advises that users first make sure that they have the most up-to-date version of the app installed on their device and, if needs be, check if they can log in via a mobile browser.

Should users still be having issues, they are advised to try recovering their Facebook account. Via this process, depending on what is required, they can reset their password, learn what to do if they can’t access the email address or phone number associated with their account to reset their password, and learn what to do if they can’t find their account from the ‘Find Your Account’ page. It’s also possible to learn how to use ‘Trusted Contacts’ to regain access to an account, find out if an account is disabled, and learn what to do if an account has been hacked.

Source: Facebook 1, 2