Woman Alters Her Name Just to Access Facebook Account

In a rather extraordinary tale, a woman has changed her official name by deed poll on the sole basis of accessing her Facebook account. Jemma Rogers, now called Jemmaroid Von Laalaa initially created her account with an alias to avoid pestering from random people or individuals she didn’t want to accept. She argued that rejecting friend requests was too awkward. This was her main account with photos of life events, Status Updates and more! Recently, Facebook has been cracking down on accounts which don’t resemble a person’s actual name. As a result, she had to prove her identity and e-mailed Facebook of the situation.

Bizarrely, they didn’t take her word seriously and still requested information proving the account’s authenticity. In a very rash, silly move, she even tried to alter her bankcards using Photoshop to show the false name. Without getting into how illegal this is, it does seem a rather extreme measure just to retrieve an online account. Ironically, Facebook didn’t take the information on board and suspended her account. The final straw was to change her name by deed poll and this didn’t make any difference whatsoever. In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, she said:

“I know I’ve been a complete moron, but Facebook are being ridiculous,”

“I’ve been locked out of my account for five weeks now and have lost all of my photos, messages and precious memories.

“So many people set up accounts in fake names so random people can’t add them or so they don’t have to awkwardly decline requests from people they know but don’t want to be ‘friends’ with.

“But Facebook have been over the top, they should be able to tell it’s a genuine account but just under a fake name. I can’t believe I am being punished like this.”

Thankfully, this absurd story has a happy ending and Facebook decided to reactive the account based on media evidence. A spokesperson for Facebook said to Digital Spy,

“Facebook asks people to use their authentic names, as we believe this makes people more accountable for what they say.”

“In this instance we made a mistake but we reactivated the account last week. We apologise for any inconvenience that this caused.”

I would love to hear your thoughts on her behaviour. What lengths would you go to access an online account with personal information?