Why I Divorced Facebook

How It All Began

I was skeptical about FB from the start.

I thought it was a social media platform where people posted photos of themselves, their friends, kids, pets, and so forth, but mainly themselves, often in exotic places on exotic trips.

They posted photos of high-calorie meals they were salivating over at expensive restaurants.

In some circles, this became known as “food porn.”

Family lawyers, however, started to mine FB pages for evidence, going to lengths such as bringing their laptops to depositions to question people about their posts.

“Is that you, Mr. Jones, with a beer in each hand during your weekend custody with little Debbie?”

“Mrs. Jones, isn’t that a rather inappropriate embrace to give your personal trainer?”

FB became essential due diligence for family law litigators like me.

Could a family lawyer be liable for malpractice if he did not check the posts of opposing parties, not to mention his own client?

The more I learned about FB, the more I realized it offered opportunities other than muckraking.

I could form groups with colleagues.

I formed the Negotiation Study group.

Many esteemed lawyers joined, and some even participated.

I could use FB to vent my political views.

I married into the family.

The next thing you know, I had given birth to two groups and three FB pages: a personal page, a page for my law practice, and one for my coaching practice.

I could post blogs and vlogs on my websites and then repost them on FB to gain more exposure.

Being a bibliophile, I posted a “book of the week” to share what I was reading with my virtual friends.

I accumulated over 1000 followers (not a big number for FB, but many more than I would have had without it).

My quirky form of wit and wisdom began to reach more people.

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Getting Hacked 

It does not take long for a FB user to learn that people can “hack” your FB page.

As it displays only minimal personal information and no financial information, why would anyone do this?

More importantly, how would you know if someone hacked you?

We learned that if someone who is already your “friend” on FB sent you a friend request, it meant someone had hacked your account.

In earlier days, this presented an easily solved problem.

You went into FB settings and changed your password.

That should take care of it.

At some point, FB’s security became a little more sophisticated; when an unauthorized person tried to access your account, FB would send you an email.

Again, the solution they offered was to change your password.

Hacking Turned Darker 

Recently, someone in Chicago (apparently) or Hanoi (?) became obsessed with hacking my account.

FB contacted me almost every day to let me know that this “unauthorized person” was trying to access my account.

I changed my password so many times that I exhausted my imagination.

He had a habit of stopping for a brief period of time, only to start back before the proverbial sun came up.

I could not understand why.

One day, I did what I usually did.

I got up, had a bite, and tried to check my FB feed.

I tried to log in to FB to see what my friends had for dinner, who had a birthday, or what smart-ass memes were posted, only to learn that I couldn't access my account at all.

I tried my usual protocol for dealing with technology problems I didn't understand: I started clicking everything available.

Nothing worked.

I called my IT guy.

He suggested that I create a new account.

That would let me into the platform (if that is how you say it), so I could see what was going on with my page.

This is what I discovered:

*

The hacker had essentially stolen my identity.

Why?

He posted photographs of some “stuff.”

He claimed that he had to put his demented uncle into a nursing home, and he had all of this really cool stuff he was willing to sell for bargain-basement prices.

He was having a virtual estate sale, posing as me.

How?

Somehow, he had finally broken the code and figured out the password to my account.

Once he had that, it was close to “game over.”

He deleted my email address as “owner” of the page without my permission, even though it had been posted for about ten years.

He substituted his own.

That meant that if the FB police contacted someone about an unauthorized user accessing my account, they would contact him and not me.

I was virtually in the dark.

Because I could still access my page through my new account, I posted a notice that my page had been hacked.

“I don’t have a demented uncle. I’m not selling anything. This is a hoax.”

I did this twice.

As soon as I posted it, the hacker took it down.

The hacker was using my credentials to sell his crap, if there was any crap to sell.

If he defrauded people, could I be held liable?

Some stupid schmuck sent him $500 via Venmo, PayPal, or some similar outfit.

He figured out it was a hoax just in time to reverse the payment.

How Do You Terminate a FB account? 

I could terminate my FB account.

Right?

Right?

Ha!

Try it.

What I Learned

There may be an easy way to terminate a FB account before someone changes your password, but if there were an easy way to do it after they changed your password, I could not find it.[1]

I spent hours clicking on every option FB offered.

That included Meta.

I’m not sure what Meta is.

I believe it to be a holding company that controls FB, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger.[2]

Nothing worked.

What I discovered that most disturbed me was that Meta had a list of my credit cards with all but the security codes.

Security codes for most credit cards are three numbers.

How hard would that be to guess on a slow day?

*

I am not sure how I got through, but I finally connected with someone on FB.

I found their response amusing (from December 30, 2025):

Thomas,

Your account is scheduled for permanent deletion.

Facebook will start deleting your account in 30 days. After Jan 29, 2026, you won't be able to access the account or any of the content you added.

To cancel the deletion of your account and retrieve any of the content or information you have added, go to Facebook.

Even if you find the right spot to click on, you still have to wait 30 days to delete your account?

Could they make it more difficult?

If you do anything on your account within the 30 days, FB could construe that as you changing your mind.

That means I cannot check whether my page is still up without using indirect means (like a friend).

If any of my readers are divorce judges, could you please sign a decree?

I’ll leave quietly.

Sadly, I will miss FB, but when you are trapped in a marriage with a scammer, what else can you do?

As of February 7, 2026, I hear my page is still posted; whether anyone can use it for anything is unknown.

[1] If you check Google, you may find a phone number to call. If you call it, you will hear “This number is busy” repeatedly.

[2] Is there an anti-trust lawyer in the house?