Low reported severity

First-person forum account: a Facebook user says a video face-scan security check failed to recognise them after their appearance changed, an automated ID check then rejected their government ID over a nickname, and they were locked out of a five-year-old account

In a public post to r/facebook on 28 September 2026, a user writes that their five-year-old Facebook account was hit with a security check that asked for a video face scan, which 'failed completely'. They say their face had changed a lot through recent life circumstances and 'The AI simply didn't recognize me.' Facebook then asked for ID, and 'the automated system instantly rejected' their government ID because their profile uses a shortened nickname. The poster says they are locked out of years of memories, friends and active Marketplace listings and are looking for a way to reach a human or download their data. Meta has said that video selfies used to regain access to compromised accounts are compared with the account's profile pictures using facial recognition; whether this check worked that way is not known. The account is uncorroborated.

AI system: Facebook video face-scan check; Meta
Occurred: Event date unknown
Reported: 28 September 2026
Event location: Unknown

What the AI did: Made a decision about the person
Reported harm: Other Material HarmPsychological Distress

Whose AI use: An institution’s AI use
Setting: Everyday life · Privacy

Evidence: AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources; 4 claims: 1 documented, 3 reported. 3 open questions
People reported harmed: 1 person

AI system as recorded: Facebook's video face-scan security check (Meta describes video-selfie verification for account recovery as using facial recognition technology); the specific system is not named in the post

What Happened

The check. The poster writes that their '5-year-old account got hit with a random security check. The app asked for a video face scan, but it failed completely.' They attribute the failure to changes in their appearance after recent life circumstances ('my face and physical definition have changed a lot') and write: 'The AI simply didn't recognize me.'

The ID step. Facebook then asked for identification. Because they use 'a shortened nickname on my profile for basic privacy', they say 'the automated system instantly rejected my government ID for a name mismatch', and that where they live they cannot get secondary official documents in the nickname.

The effect. 'It’s pretty gutting.' The poster says they are 'locked out of years of memories, friends, and active Marketplace listings' and would settle for 'a way to bypass the lock screen to download my archive data and photos.'

Context. Meta's newsroom post on account recovery says that with video selfies 'we’ll use facial recognition technology to compare the selfie to the profile pictures on the account they’re trying to access.' That describes the feature in general. It does not establish how this particular check was made, and the post does not say whether the check followed a suspected compromise.

Limits. Single anonymous account; no screenshots or messages from Facebook were published, and the date of the check is not stated.

Reported harm

The poster reports that a Facebook video face-scan check failed to recognise them and an automated ID check rejected their ID over a nickname, locking them out of a five-year-old account with years of photos, contacts and active Marketplace listings, which they describe as 'pretty gutting' (first-person account, uncorroborated).

Outcome

Ongoing

At the time of posting the poster was still locked out and asking how to reach a human reviewer or download their archive. No response from Meta is reported.

What remains unknown

The date of the security check and the poster's location.
Why the security check was triggered and whether a human reviewed the face scan or the ID.
Whether the poster regained access or obtained a data download.

What the evidence supports

AI involvement: reported. The poster says a video face scan in Facebook's security check failed and that 'The AI' did not recognise them. Meta's newsroom documents that video selfies used to recover compromised accounts are compared with profile pictures using facial recognition, without saying whether a human reviews the result or covering routine security checks; the ID rejection is attributed by the poster to an 'automated system' and is not established as AI.

4 claims: 1 documented, 3 reported. What the statuses mean

Reported The poster's five-year-old Facebook account was put through a security check that asked for a video face scan, and the scan failed; the poster attributes this to changes in their appearance and says the AI did not recognise them.

Causal attribution. Poster's account and attribution; no messages from Facebook were published.

reddit.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
'My 5-year-old account got hit with a random security check.'; 'The app asked for a video face scan, but it failed completely.'; 'my face and physical definition have changed a lot'; 'The AI simply didn't recognize me.'

Reported Facebook then asked for ID, and an automated system rejected the poster's government ID because the profile uses a shortened nickname.

Causal attribution. Poster's account; the post does not say the ID check used AI.

reddit.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
'Then it asked for ID.'; 'I use a shortened nickname on my profile for basic privacy'; 'the automated system instantly rejected my government ID for a name mismatch'

Reported The poster says they are locked out of years of memories, friends and active Marketplace listings, describes the loss as gutting, and is seeking a way to reach a human reviewer or download their data.

Causal attribution. Poster's own statement of the effect.

reddit.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
'It’s pretty gutting.'; 'locked out of years of memories, friends, and active Marketplace listings'; 'a way to bypass the lock screen to download my archive data and photos'; 'hoping someone here has navigated this specific deadlock or found a way to reach a human'

Documented Meta says that, when people verify their identity with a video selfie to regain access to a compromised account, it uses facial recognition technology to compare the selfie with the profile pictures on the account.

Causal attribution. General product description by Meta; it does not establish how this check was decided.

about.fb.com(opens in new tab) supports · English
'The user will upload a video selfie and we’ll use facial recognition technology to compare the selfie to the profile pictures on the account they’re trying to access.'

Sources

2 sources inspected. Sources that repeat one account do not corroborate each other.

r/facebook, 28 September 2026: public first-person post about a failed AI face scan and an ID rejected over a nickname (title shortened)(opens in new tab)
s1 · reddit.com · Forum post · English · Inspected · 28 September 2026 · Primary
about.fb.com(opens in new tab)
s2 · Company blog · English · Inspected

How the sources were read, and where the events happened

Read in English on 2026-09-29: full self-text retrieved through the arctic_shift archive API by post ID. The poster handle is not recorded. Applies to s1.

Meta newsroom post first published 21 October 2024 with later updates, fetched 2026-09-29 (200). Describes the feature in general; it does not address this account. Applies to s2.

Event countries: Unknown. Affected-person countries: Unknown. Court countries: Unknown.

The post says only 'Where I live' without naming a place; the comments add nothing. Unknown after review.

Reviewed for publication 2026-09-29: Published under the 2026-09-15 charter's public-forum rule as a concrete first-person account of a Facebook video face-scan security check, which the poster describes as AI, failing to recognise them and, with an ID rejection, locking them out of their account; described with attribution and without corroboration. Meta's own description of video-selfie verification is cited as context only. Personal circumstances the poster gives for their changed appearance are summarised, not reproduced. No handle is recorded.

People described

An adult Facebook user (the poster; not named, location not stated)

People reported harmed in this case

1 person

1 AI participant · 0 other people harmed

One person: the poster, locked out of their own account. Commenters describing their own lockouts are not counted. Exact 1.

Counted once within this case. The same person may appear in other cases. This count does not establish AI causation.

Cite this case

Compiled per our published methodology: verification statuses, sourcing standards, and corrections process.

APA

NOPE. (2026). First-person forum account: a Facebook user says a video face-scan security check failed to recognise them after their appearance changed, an automated ID check then rejected their government ID over a nickname, and they were locked out of a five-year-old account. AI incidents. https://nope.net/incidents/2026-facebook-video-selfie-face-scan-failed-account-lockout-first-person

BibTeX

@misc{2026_facebook_video_selfie_face_scan_failed_account_lockout_first_person,
  title = {First-person forum account: a Facebook user says a video face-scan security check failed to recognise them after their appearance changed, an automated ID check then rejected their government ID over a nickname, and they were locked out of a five-year-old account},
  author = {NOPE},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {AI incidents},
  url = {https://nope.net/incidents/2026-facebook-video-selfie-face-scan-failed-account-lockout-first-person}
}

US: FTC says Rite Aid's facial recognition falsely matched shoppers to a watchlist, leading staff to search an 11-year-old girl and call police on a woman

In a complaint filed in federal court in Pennsylvania on 19 December 2023, the US Federal Trade Commission alleged that the pharmacy chain Rite Aid used facial recognition in its stores to match customers against a database of people it suspected of shoplifting or other wrongdoing, and that staff acted on the match alerts by following, searching, ejecting and publicly accusing customers and by calling the police. The FTC says many alerts were false positives: employees recorded thousands of false-positive alerts between December 2019 and July 2020, staff stopped and searched an 11-year-old girl on a false match, and employees called the police on a Black woman matched to an image of a white woman with blonde hair. Rite Aid agreed to a proposed order barring it from using facial recognition in retail stores for five years, without admitting or denying the allegations.

Low Otter Notetaker

United States: seven people who say they had no Otter account allege its AI Notetaker recorded calls without consent; a judge let core privacy claims proceed

Seven people in California, Illinois and Washington state are suing Otter.ai in a consolidated class action in the Northern District of California. Each says another meeting participant used Otter's AI Notetaker on a Zoom or Microsoft Teams call they joined, and that Otter recorded, transcribed and stored their conversation without their consent; six of them date their calls between March 2024 and May 2025. They say they were not Otter account holders. The calls they describe include a medical consultation, meetings with a financial professional and work discussions. They allege that Otter keeps the recordings and uses them to train its speech-recognition models, that it captured voiceprints of the Illinois plaintiffs, and one of them says learning of the recording left him frustrated, embarrassed and stressed. On 13 August 2026 the court found that the alleged interception of private conversations was a concrete injury and let the federal wiretap, California eavesdropping and Illinois biometric claims proceed, while dismissing some claims. Otter's answer to the consolidated complaint, filed on 17 September 2026, says it lacks knowledge of the plaintiffs' experiences and denies the allegations.

Medium ChatGPT

Victorian child protection worker put a family's information into ChatGPT to draft a court report that minimised risk to the child, regulator finds

Victoria's Information Commissioner (OVIC) found in a report published on 24 September 2024 that a child protection worker at the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing (DFFH) used ChatGPT in or around September 2023 to draft a Protection Application Report submitted to the Children's Court about a young child. On the balance of probabilities, OVIC found the worker entered personal information, including names, about the child, mother, father and carer, disclosing it to OpenAI; the worker admitted using ChatGPT but denied entering personal information. OVIC found generated content in the report described a doll that the father had reportedly used for sexual purposes as a parental strength ('age-appropriate toys'), downplaying the risk to the child, although the court's and the department's decisions did not change. The report was withdrawn and replaced, and the mother, father and carer described anxiety when told of the disclosure. OVIC found serious breaches of two privacy principles and issued a compliance notice requiring DFFH to ban and block generative AI text tools for child protection staff until November 2026; DFFH accepted the breach findings.

Low OpenAI support assistant (reported)

ChatGPT Pro subscriber says OpenAI's AI support assistant, asked for compensation, processed a refund that ended a restored subscription (first-person account)

In a public post to r/ChatGPTcomplaints created on 17 October 2026, a ChatGPT Pro subscriber writes that OpenAI disabled their account two days after they paid $200 on 30 September, rejected their appeals for about two weeks, and on 17 October restored the account, acknowledging in an email that it had been disabled in error. The poster says they then asked OpenAI's AI-powered support assistant for compensation for the lost days while keeping the subscription. According to the poster, the assistant said it could not give credits, usage resets or discounts, offered a proportional refund of $86.67 and warned that accepting it would immediately cancel the subscription; the poster replied 'Yes, I approve', and the assistant then said the paid access had ended, that it could not reverse the refund, and suggested buying another subscription. The poster acknowledges the warning and their confirmation but says they misunderstood the consequence and had asked about the lost period, not the remaining one. The request was forwarded to a human specialist and was unresolved at the time of posting. The account is uncorroborated; the post was later removed by Reddit for an unstated reason.

If you or someone you know is struggling, free and confidential support is available. Find a helpline near you at Signpost.

Back to all incidents