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If for some reason you find yourself locked out of your Facebook account, now your closest friends can assist you.
Trusted Contacts is a system that’s been tested since early 2011 but just recently hit mainstream Facebook. Though the feature is completely optional, Facebook does encourage all users to pick five most trusted contacts that can help you recover your account in case it’s locked for one reason or another. The social network sends security codes to these five friends if a lockout happens, and if three of them pass their codes along to you, you can access your account immediately afterwards.
“With Trusted Contacts, there’s no need to worry about remembering the answer to your security question or filling out long web forms to prove who you are,” Facebook said in their blog last week.
The biggest change to the feature since the testing began is that instead of selecting contacts you’d like to send a code to after you’ve been locked out, you choose your five Trusted Contacts long before you ever get locked out of an account. Your friends will receive notifications when you get locked out, and they can choose to share them with you.
Remember, you should only choose contacts you know you can trust. A good rule of thumb is to simply ask yourself if you’d allow that friend into your house with a spare key. If you would, then they might be a good trusted contact choice.
If this feature doesn’t work for you, you still have the option to answer your security questions in lieu of asking your friends for support.
Photo credit: Facebook
