Suspicious Facebook login requirement

Has anyone ever seen this requirement upon trying to log in to their Facebook account?

Facebook message

The message:

Confirm Your Identity

To continue, we need you to provide your mobile phone number. This quick security check helps keep Facebook a community of real people who connect and share using their real identities. If you ever lose your password, you’ll also be able to use your mobile number to access your account.

Confirm your identity by adding a mobile number to your account

Add your phone [Link]

Now, is it just me or is this fishy?

1. As far as I recall, I haven’t given Facebook my mobile number. So they’re not asking for it to validate against their records. (And if they were, wouldn’t they make that clear?)

2. As far as I know, there’s nothing that prompted this. I haven’t changed my email address, my name, or used my account unusually. If they are doing this “for my protection” (i.e. if my account has been hacked) they certainly aren’t being upfront about that.

3. They have literally locked out my account until I provide this information. I can’t get past this screen, nor can I access via any mobile access. (In fact, on a mobile site, it tells me my account is locked and that I must visit the site on a computer.)

Anyone have any insight into this rather suspect development?

3 thoughts on “Suspicious Facebook login requirement

  1. Hi Jojoba 🙂

    When I was travelling earlier in the year, I came across Facebook’s odd version of identity proof a few times. I have no problem with the identity check but some of the methods were bizarre.

    1) asked for my date of birth (which I had not correctly given to facebook, so it was a miracle I remembered what I’d provided)
    2) asked me to confirm some group membership or other (from years ago – if I was the type to join every group that came at me, I’d have been in a bind)
    3) And this made me laugh out loud at the ridiculousness – gave me a group of pictures (not my pictures) in which “friends” of mine are tagged and gave me a multiple-choice quiz on identifying the correct people!

    Very tedious stuff.

    But, if you’re not in another country, you’ve never given facebook or an app your mobile number and you’re not connecting over a VPN, I’d be pretty wary.

    Then again, I can’t abide facebook, so I’m wary of anything to do with it.

    Exxx

  2. I’ll tell you exactly what’s going on, although you probably won’t believe me. You may even dismiss what I have to say with some ever-so-clever comment about tin foil hats. Nevertheless, the following is true, and checkable.

    Facebook is the CIA.

    Facebook was started with funding from an firm called In-Q-Tel, which is a CIA front. If you don’t believe me, look it up.

    Your mobile phone has GPS data. You can be tracked wherever you go.

    Normally, law enforcement has to get a warrant to track you via GPS. But when you sign on to Facebook, you give them permission to track you — wherever you go — without a warrant.

    They have a new service called Places which allows you to divulge your location, using you mobile’s GPS data, with the click of a button.

    That program is opt-in, of course, so people think that their privacy is secured.

    What they don’t understand is that FACEBOOK has that information at all times.

    And Facebook is really the CIA.

  3. What if you don’t have a cell phone? I have a house phone, but that doesn’t get text messages. What now????

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