A friend of mine nominated me as a “trusted contact” for their Facebook account. Can you explain what it is and how I can set up a few friends to be my own trusted Facebook contacts?
Imagine you forgot your password to your Facebook account, got booted off the email service you prefer and lost your smartphone, all on the same [really bad] day. Not good. How do you get back into your account? With over a billion active accounts, Facebook sure doesn’t have time to deal with you one-on-one so if you can’t gain access to your recovery email address and your phone’s lost or hijacked, well, you’re out of luck. A dark day in your social media life, for sure.
Unless you planned ahead. That’s exactly what Facebook trusted contacts are all about; it’s a set of very close friends or family that you designate who can vouch for your identity if the otherwise unthinkable happens and you’re locked out of your own account. It’s a pretty interesting program because they can’t suddenly turn on you and gain access to your account, as far as I can tell, nothing actually happens unless you are properly and fully locked out, at which point you invoke “trusted friends, help me!” and they’re notified.
Frankly, Facebook keeps the process a bit of a mystery, likely for security reasons, but even if you never need to actually utilize it, not a bad idea to specify a few trusted contacts just in case, right? So let’s see how that’s done!
To start, go to Settings in Facebook, then choose “Security and Login”:
There are a number of different options – and yes, you should definitely enable two-step verification! If you haven’t, here’s a handy guide: enable 2-step Facebook account verification – but you’ll want to scroll down to find this section:
To begin the process of selecting who will become the tributes for your personal Hunger Games, um, trusted contacts, click on “Edit”…
Here’s what I find interesting and perhaps revealing about the world of Facebook: wouldn’t you think it would say “friends and family” here? Wouldn’t you think that for most people family is actually more trusted than friends? Maybe it’s just me, but I have a feeling that Facebookers aren’t so close with their siblings 🙂
Anyway… click on “Choose friends” to proceed and an explanation pops up of what exactly is going on:
One more click and you’ll have a little box wherein you can type in the names of your friends [or family members]:
I’ll pick a few close friends who I trust, and a family member too, so I’ll see this:
Looks good to me. I just hope that at least one of Katerina, Anne, Brian and Christian will talk to me after I have such a bad day I can’t get into my email or anything! A click on “Confirm” moves the process forward…
If I get mad at everyone, “Remove All” can help, but… I’ll stick with this list for now.
Each of them now gets a notification that I’ve added them that looks like this:
Or possibly like this (when Brian added me back as his trusted contact):
Either way, I’m now covered in the untoward circumstance that I’m otherwise locked out of my Facebook account. How about you? What’s your plan if things get dire with social media? 🙂
Pro Tip: Still have questions about Facebook? I have tons of Facebook info here on the site and you can also follow my popular Facebook page: Ask Dave Taylor.
HI! Can anyone please help me!
I have tried everything I can possibly do to access my Facebook account,
I have no longer got access to my email for it for them to send me a recovery code nor the mobile number as I have a new phone etc…
I have got two People Set up for trusted contacts.. however when I have got them to go to the website to help give me the recovery code. it states that they are not the account holders trusted people when in fact they are as i can access my account on my phone app but no where else as i cant change the password on the app also as i dont know what it is.
Have tried contacting facebook and Microsoft countless of times to help me out but nothing., next step would be to make a new account but i really want to avoid that if i can this is my last source. many thanks
My daughter can’t log in (locked out from putting the wrong pass in too many times). Using “trusted contacts” is the ONLY option facebook gives her.
Facebook picked 5 contacts. 2 of them don’t use facebook and don’t know their passwords and another one gets this message “Please tell your friend that you are not one of the trusted contacts they set for their account.” So only 2 of the contacts can help her, but facebook want’s 3! What kind of crap is this?
There are no other options, so she’s screwed.
Why can’t the email verification be enough?? Her email wasn’t hacked! Neither was her facebook account……
I’m trying to help a friend log into the Facebook account but when I click the link provided that’s what the page shows, that I’m not a trusted contact. Why am I then in the trusted contacts list if I haven’t been approved as such? They also call it a special link but it’s just the facebook address plus “/recover”, doesn’t seem like I can do much beyond this point so I wonder what good is the trusted contacts list for if it’s so limited. I’d like to help my friend but seeing this doesn’t work properly I doubt it has been fully implemented as to this day.
Wasn’t that the same feature which is used for disabling a FB account in the case that the account owner dies? Apparently, in case that something happens, your trusted friend can approve to FB that you’re indeed dead. Not sure if it was the same feature but I’m sure that I’ve heard of this before.