Facebook outage causes incorrect password errors

ByCraig Haley

Facebook and Instagram have both suffered a worldwide outage causing many users to be automatically logged out and unable to log back in to their accounts, instead facing password errors.

There are many Facebook and Instagram users probably panicking a little today after finding themselves automatically logged out of their accounts and unable to log back in due to an “incorrect password”, most likely rising suspicions that their accounts have somehow been hacked.

But worry not. This isn’t the work of cyber criminals gaining access to your account. At least not specifically your account. It’s a worldwide issue with Meta, the parent company behind Facebook and Instagram, with thousands taking to alternative social media platforms like Twitter (X) to report they can no longer gain access to their accounts.

A usually reliable signal that this is a rather large outage is that websites dedicated to telling users if certain websites are experiencing downtime (like IsItDownRightNow.com) are themselves unavailable due to the massive number of confused users trying to access those websites.


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And needless to say, Facebook is also trending on, surprise surprise, Twitter.

Here’s what we know so far.

– The outage appears sporadic, with many users still able to access Instagram, but most users unable to access Facebook, either via the app or the desktop version.

– All “active session” tokens have expired. What does this mean? Well when you log into Facebook, it creates an active session token, which expires after a period of time or when you log out of a website. If you keep Facebook open on your computer, the session stays open, meaning you don’t need to keep entering your password each time you close and reopen Facebook. However all session have been expired – either as a result of a glitch or intentionally by Facebook due to another incident – meaning affected users have been logged out of their accounts.

– Affected users can’t log back in. In a particularly worrying sign, users can’t log back in, and are presented with an error message that the password they entered is incorrect, leading many users to suspect that their accounts have been compromised. It means that Facebook is currently unable to verifying login credentials of affected users.

– You can’t reset your password either. Efforts to change your password are also presented with an error message.

– Facebook are aware and are working on the issue. Facebook comms spokesperson ~Andy Stone informs users on Twitter that Facebook are working on the issue currently.

As for the reason for the outage, that is yet to be revealed. Misconfiguration, faulty hardware or cyber crooks? Take your bets. Any updates will be below.

Mar5th – UPDATE: Facebook users are slowly reporting being able to regain access to their Facebook accounts. No reason has been officially revealed yet as to the reason of the outage.

Mar5th UPDATE: Facebook comms spokesperson Andy Stone tells users via Twitter that the issue has been resolved and was due to a “technical issue”. See tweet below.

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