It's probably happened to all of us. You get used to automatically logging into Facebook. And then one day, you switch phones, your app crashes, or something else happens, and suddenly you can't access the social network because you've forgotten your password. This also often happens if you stopped using this time-consuming social network years ago, and now that you have a little more free time, you've decided to pick it up again. Whatever your situation, don't worry. There are several ways to recover access to your Facebook account if you've forgotten your password , so we're going to give you some solutions so you can go back to liking your friends' posts endlessly and without thinking.
Video tutorial:
If you can't remember your Facebook account password, you've come to the right article. You can continue reading the following points to know step by step what is the process to recover it, or take a look at our video tutorial on YouTube:
Facebook password problems
The day you signed up for Facebook, you had to use an email address and a password. Over time, the service may have also asked for your mobile phone number, a detail you're probably regretting if you didn't provide it and are now trying to recover your password.
Several scenarios are possible in this situation. If you need to access your Facebook account and don't know your password, the service will ask for your email address to send you a recovery link. To do this, simply access the Facebook account recovery panel and enter your email address.
Once complete, the service will identify the existence of said email in its database and will offer you the available options to recover your password, which are usually the following:
- Use Google account: If you have previously linked your Google account to the service, you will have the opportunity to use your Google account as a password recovery method so that you can quickly change your password. This could be a workable solution, since if you use Android, you most likely have direct access to your Google account. If you also only have a Google account, the process will be quite simple.
- Send code by email: This method is the most common and used by users, since it will send an email to the email account that is related to the profile. You just have to choose the option and you will immediately receive an email with a link for you to access and change the password for a new one. The form that you will access will allow you to establish a new password in your Facebook account, so now you know, you will not lose it again. This option is the one that is usually used when you do not have a linked Google account.
- Send code via SMS: If you previously configured your mobile phone number, the account unlock code will be sent via SMS to the mobile number you had registered in said account. Including the mobile phone in your Facebook account is not something to the taste of all users, but with adequate privacy, it will be extremely useful in extreme cases like this.
How can I recover my Facebook password if I don't have access to email?
If for any reason you don't have access to the email address you used to register with Facebook, the solutions to recover your password involve the other two options. You can either log in with your Google account (if it's linked), or you can use your phone number to receive an SMS with the relevant code.
To do this, on the account recovery website, instead of entering your email, use the phone number you have registered with Facebook to proceed with sending the SMS. That will be your last chance to recover your Facebook account.
What if I don't have an associated phone number?
Here's the bad news. If you don't have a phone number associated with your Facebook account, you'll have no way to recover your password, as Facebook won't be able to reliably verify your identity. So, the only option left is to forget about the account and start a new life on Facebook. This is exactly what happens, since Facebook keeps privacy completely secure (ahem), and doesn't accept any other method for recovering your account.
How do I save my mobile number on Facebook?
You might not be too keen on entering your phone number on social media. We understand. According to official Facebook information, only you will be able to see your phone number, so you shouldn't worry about it being leaked. To date, there are no known cases of spam or data theft resulting from using this type of information, so you can rest assured about entering it into your account. Keep in mind that your privacy settings are what will truly protect your account from prying eyes and intruders, so that's where you should focus your attention.
The telephone data is used, in addition to recovering the password, to receive SMS notifications, although it is indirectly used to receive friend suggestions and more specific and defined announcements. It is something quite personal, but if you are usually a disaster with passwords, you may have no other to avoid problems in the future.
To enter your phone number in the Facebook profile we will have to do the following:
- Log in to your Facebook account with your profile.
- Access the Settings panel.
- And click on the Mobile section.
- Select the option add phone number and save the changes.
- You will receive a confirmation code via SMS that you must enter in the box on the right to definitively confirm that the number you entered is indeed yours.
Your mobile phone number will have been registered to your account, so from now on you can log in and recover your password using that information.
Your phone number will only be used to access the service, receive SMS notifications (if you configure them) and find people from your contact list, but at no time will Facebook use it to sell advertising or anything similar.
The trusted friends
Just like with house keys, we can always leave a copy with a trusted neighbor to help us get into our home in case of theft or loss. The same applies to Facebook. In the settings panel, under the Security and Login section, you'll find the Trusted Friends option , a feature that allows you to recover your password using the account of one of your friends on the network.
So that you can use this in the future you will have to enter the name of the friends that you want to be able to recover your password in case they need it.
With these last measures you should be able to secure access to your account in a lot of possible scenarios, so it wouldn't hurt to review your account settings and take a look to see if you have everything in order although, what if you have no way to protect that password? Here below we offer you several alternatives.
Write down the password on a piece of paper
It sounds analog, like something from another world, but paradoxically it's a pretty secure way to have a password written down in the digital world we live in now, since, apart from people who occasionally pass by our house and who might have some interest in snooping through our Facebook account, the rest of the planet will have no way of accessing it.
So yes, grab a pen and paper and write down your social media password so that, if you forget it, you have somewhere to retrieve it. Believe us, given the current state of hackers and other cyber threats, it makes you want to go back to the Stone Age when everything we used in our daily lives was physical and tangible. Right?
Of course, try to write it in a place that no one will look at. There is no use putting it on a board. Look for some kind of notebook where you can write down important information, but that is not visible to anyone who comes to visit our house.
Write down the password in the cloud
It's often said that in the digital world, there's no password more secure than one written down in pen on a piece of paper and stored in a drawer, because its physical (and almost analog) nature keeps it far from the clutches of potential hackers. While this may be true, it's not a practical method because if we need it at work or anywhere else, we'll still have a problem. So, fortunately, we have a more digital and online option: protecting that password in a vault , or safe, on a cloud storage service.
So what are those services? Well, there are two that offer secure storage solutions, allowing us to keep confidential and sensitive information (ID cards, bank card numbers, account recovery codes, etc.) away from the root directory where we keep the folders and files we use daily. These are OneDrive and Dropbox, which add an extra layer of security with biometric verification to access and read anything. So, take that Facebook password, write it down in a Word document (or Windows Wordpad), and upload it to that secure location so that, if you need to remember it, you can retrieve it with just a couple of clicks.
However, there are several services that can also do this task for you. Here we will show you a few:
- LastPass: Allows you to create an encrypted password store and integrate into the browser to auto-complete the login forms of the websites you visit on the Internet. Its weak point is that you have to pay a monthly subscription if you want to use the app on both mobile and PC or Mac.
- 1Password: an app of the same style with which you will never lose a password. It has its own two-step verification system and detects any type of intrusion into our account. As in the previous case, you have a monthly membership. In this case, it is worth $2,99 ​​per month, although there is a family account that saves a lot of money.
- North Pass: It is a password manager from the same company that sells the NordVPN service. It works in a similar way to Lastpass, and it syncs between devices of different types. Its price is not cheap, but some NordVPN memberships integrate this functionality, being a somewhat more interesting alternative in this case.
What about two-step verification?
Another method you can use to reduce the importance of your social media password is to activate two-step verification on your Facebook account and receive a one-time code each time you want to log in. This has the advantage that you can tell Chrome to store that code in its keychain because the important thing is that second layer of security you apply to your profile.
To activate it, you just have to:
- Download a two-step authentication app like the one below from Google.
- Access the official website of Facebook.
- Select Configuration.
- Go to the section Security and login.
- Edit the settings Use two-step authentication.
- Follow the steps that are required.
With this two-step verification, you can create a weak password, without too many complications , and one that you can easily remember because the important thing is to keep the Authenticator application (like Google's) safe on your smartphone from prying hacker eyes and accept any request as long as you have generated it yourself.
Other utilities for 2FA
Google Authenticator is the '2 factor authentication' app par excellence. However, it is not the best. Authenticator does not save its database in the cloud, so if you change mobile, you will have to reconfigure all your accounts from scratch. A real nuisance.
The best alternative to Authenticator is Authy . This application is available for all operating systems (both mobile and desktop). It can also be installed as a browser extension.
Authy works with a master password, and the app is linked to our phone number. As soon as we log in to a new terminal, Authy will ask us for the master password. Only if we put it right, we will be able to access the rest of the 2FA codes that we have stored.
In case you were wondering, it's a completely free application.
I can't log in with two-step verification
Don't despair, all is not lost. Generally, the best thing you can do is connect a code generator app. You can install the algorithm in Google Authenticator , although Authy is an even better option, as you'll be able to launch the same app on multiple devices. We also recommend installing the code generator on your smartwatch . Almost all of them have an app—even if it's a third-party one—that allows you to do this.
If your code generator fails, you can always request a one- time password (OTP) via SMS to log in to the social network. It's possible the code will arrive on your phone but still won't work. This has happened to us a few times. Don't worry, though. Facebook's system does experience occasional outages, so you might not actually have a problem; the system could simply be overloaded, and you'll have to wait.
If this happens to you, ask for a new SMS. There are times when you have to wait a number of minutes between requests. But, as we told you, if you have an associated phone number in your profile, you will be able to regain access to your account sooner or later.