Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Phone Numbers (2016)
I have/had a Facebook account with a phone number. The account was left unused for a few years. Recently, I used my E-mail to reset its password, unfortunately, since the account was abandoned for a long time, the system flagged my activity as "suspicious" automatically, and asks me for confirmation using my phone number.<p>But I no longer own that number.<p>And from the customer Q&A forum, I realized I was not the only one - it is almost impossible to find an actual human from Facebook to solve this kind of verification problem.<p>All I wanted is to delete it, but I can't. Now, my account becomes a zombie, can't be used, can't be deleted, and has lots of personal information. All thanks to the falsehoods Facebook programmers believed about phone numbers, and its non-existent "customer [0]" service.<p>I've heard Google has similar issues [1], if the machine works, then everything is fine, until you need a human...<p>Repeat after me: fxxk Facebook.<p>[0] because I'm the product, not the customer?<p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18886804" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18886804</a>,<p>and read this comment, <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18887548" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18887548</a>