Facebook Really Spams You to Come Back

Sarah Frier writing for Bloomberg:

It’s been about a year since Rishi Gorantala deleted the Facebook app from his phone, and the company has only gotten more aggressive in its emails to win him back. The social network started out by alerting him every few days about friends that had posted photos or made comments—each time inviting him to click a link and view the activity on Facebook. He rarely did.

Then, about once a week in September, he started to get prompts from a Facebook security customer-service address. “It looks like you’re having trouble logging into Facebook,” the emails would say. “Just click the button below and we’ll log you in. If you weren’t trying to log in, let us know.” He wasn’t trying. But he doesn’t think anybody else was, either.

I’ve been getting these emails too and what was weird to me is I have two accounts, one super old that I deleted years ago, and another that is current. I would get the same “It looks like you’re having trouble logging into Facebook,” email at the same minute. Which means either someone knows both my emails and can attempt the login really fast, I’m on some bot list or something else entirely.

Hearing this story makes me think it’s either a widespread bug on Facebook or they are indeed being shady. Unfortunately​, based on their history I’m not sure I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.