Locked Yourself Out of Facebook? Get Back in with New Trusted Contacts Feature
Facebook is making it easier to recover your Facebook account in the event that you ever forget your password (which, let’s be honest, we’ve all done once or twice). Instead of going through the rigamarole of resetting your password and answering a bunch of security questions to do so, the social network announced the new Trusted Contacts feature, which is the polished and rebranded version of the Trusted Friends tool that Facebook started testing in 2011.
Basically, you can choose three to five of your Facebook contacts who will receive a security code and instructions on how to help you in the event you need help logging in. You can easily set up and manage your Trusted Contacts via the Security Settings area. If you get stuck, you can call at least three of those friends to get you the security codes so you can get back into your account.
Facebook likens the selection of these special contacts to someone to whom you’d give a spare house key.
In theory, Trusted Contacts sounds like a good idea, but in practice it seems as though it’d be a bit ungainly. Sure, it’s annoying to have to go through a bunch of questions and steps to recover a password, but is it any less so to have to call or email three friends to get a security code?
More importantly, being someone else’s Trusted Contact sounds like a burden. Nobody will be particularly enthused about having to drop what they’re doing at a moment’s notice, dig around and find so-and-so’s security code, and send it back to them. But hey, maybe that’s just us and our curmudgeonly attitude.
Basically, you can choose three to five of your Facebook contacts who will receive a security code and instructions on how to help you in the event you need help logging in. You can easily set up and manage your Trusted Contacts via the Security Settings area. If you get stuck, you can call at least three of those friends to get you the security codes so you can get back into your account.
Facebook likens the selection of these special contacts to someone to whom you’d give a spare house key.
In theory, Trusted Contacts sounds like a good idea, but in practice it seems as though it’d be a bit ungainly. Sure, it’s annoying to have to go through a bunch of questions and steps to recover a password, but is it any less so to have to call or email three friends to get a security code?
More importantly, being someone else’s Trusted Contact sounds like a burden. Nobody will be particularly enthused about having to drop what they’re doing at a moment’s notice, dig around and find so-and-so’s security code, and send it back to them. But hey, maybe that’s just us and our curmudgeonly attitude.
