Got an unusual name? Facebook may think it’s fake

“Alicia Istanbul woke up one recent Wednesday to find herself locked out of the Facebook account she opened in 2007, one Facebook suddenly deemed fake.

The stay-at-home mom was cut off not only from her 330 friends, including many she had no other way of contacting, but also from the pages she had set up for the jewelry design business she runs from her Atlanta-area home.

Although Istanbul understands why Facebook insists on having real people behind real names for every account, she wonders why the online hangout didn’t simply ask before acting.”

From the Associated Press. Most interesting is that this Facebook policy forces people to change the spelling of their names, thus defeating the primary way people find each other. I’ve noticed, for example, that my wife and other married women often use their original last name in their Facebook profiles so childhood friends can find them easily. As the article points out, Facebook’s policy hurts a lot of innocent people while letting other obvious fake names on their system.

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