How do I recover my Facebook password?
Hi everyone, Leo Notenboom here for Ask Leo.com. This
is perhaps one of the most common questions I get almost daily,
and it's certainly the most common class of question.
I get. Forgotten passwords.
So what I want to do in this video is walk you through the steps to recover your
account, maybe recover your password, but at least be able.
To set a new one.
I have to warn you that unless you've
prepared for this ahead of time, it may not work.
By that I mean there are some things
that need to be in place before you need to recover your account.
If those things aren't in place, you may not be able to recover your
password, you may not be able to regain access to your account.
You may have lost the account forever.
I'll review what those are as we go along,
because you'll see pretty quickly what it means.
So here we are in my Windows Ten machine looking at Ask Leo.
Let's head over to Facebook.
Now in this case, I have allowed LastPass
to fill in my email address and my password.
For me, for the purposes of this example, I'm going to go ahead and
just disable LastPass real quick. And you.
Can see that it has disappeared from the taskbar.
I'm going to go ahead and refresh.
This page because you'll see now the little icons for Last pass are gone.
We don't know what the password is.
Although you'll notice that this came up.
We did allow Edge to save the password.
That may come in handy a little later,
but for the moment, let's assume that that didn't happen.
We have our email address,
but we don't know our password or our password isn't working.
Click on Forgot password.
Now at this point, it's going to.
Ask you for recovery information, either your.
Email address or your phone number or.
Something else that's been associated with the account.
Since we did see the example at.
Puget Sound Software here as my email account, I'm going to go ahead and.
Paste that in here and hit search.
It is looking for the account based.
On the email address.
It has located the account.
Now it is asking to send a.
Code via email to a different email address.
You'll notice that this
l**@r****.com, it's obscuring.
What the real recovery email address is.
But I did set one ahead of time.
That's important.
You must have an email recovery address.
Or in some cases a phone number that you can use to get a recovery code.
In my case, that's all set up.
I'm going to go ahead and hit continue.
And it actually did send the recovery.
Code to the email addresses, both of these email addresses.
Once we get that recovery code,
we can enter it here and that will have proved that we are the person authorized
to get email sent to those email addresses.
And since those email addresses were configured for the account.
That proves that we are authorized to access this account.
When you hit continue, you will then be prompted to set a new password.
Now, I don't want to do that.
Because I want to use the existing.
Password on the account, but I don't know the existing password to the account.
Well, a couple of things.
One is I'm going to cancel this and we're going to go back to forgot password.
This no longer have access to those.
In this case, if you no longer.
Have access to the email, you could try to log in again.
But we couldn't log in again.
We're stuck if we don't have access.
To either of these email accounts.
Either the original email account that was.
Used for this Facebook account, or one.
Of the recovery email addresses, the one I've got listed here that's
partially obscured, or a recovery phone number that could.
Also have been configured.
My account does not have one configured.
If you had one configured, that would.
Be listed here as well.
If you don't have access to any.
Of those, you don't have access to your account.
You cannot recover the account.
There is no way Facebook will not.
Give you access unless you can prove you are who you say you are.
And that means you have access to.
Either the email address associated with the account,
the email addresses that you've additionally associated with the account
as recovery email addresses, or the phone number that is associated
with that account in order to be able to receive an SMS message.
That would have a recovery code that.
We would have entered in place earlier.
Without all of that, you cannot log.
Into your account and Facebook will not give you access.
Facebook will not tell you what your existing password is.
But obviously if you're using a password.
Manager like I was,
LastPass has the password stored for you and you can see what it is in LastPass.
But what if you're not?
What if you're not using a password manager at all?
If you let your browser save passwords for you, then you may be able.
To see what the last remembered password was.
Let's do that here.
I'm using Edge.
So in Edge, I'm going to go to settings passwords, and you can see.
Here that it lists Facebook.com, the email.
Address, or the username that's used for that account.
And then it shows here a dotted.
Line in place of password.
If I hit this little icon here, it's an eyeball.
In case you can't tell.
It's an eyeball with an eyebrow.
If you have that, you can see.
It says show password.
I'm going to click it now.
In this case, since this is Edge.
It'S going to ask me to once again confirm that I am who I say I am.
In this case, am I the person who is
authorized to log into this version of Windows?
This setup of Windows this prevents somebody.
From just walking up and being able to see your passwords.
Now I type in my password and.
There it is, my password.
Now you can't see it because we're obscuring this password in this video.
But rest assured that this password is now displayed completely.
And I can write it down, I.
Can copy paste it, I can do whatever I want to with it.
That is the last straw of hope.
If you've let your browser remember passwords.
Or if it just accidentally remembered passwords.
For you, maybe it's not even something.
You're paying attention to.
This is something to go back and look at to see if the browser.
Had remembered the password for you.
This is a feature of all modern browsers.
Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Brave, they all have this.
And typically it's turned on by default.
Typically it prompts you if you want
to save the password when you first enter it.
But the bottom line is that it's.
Very easy to overlook.
Just say yes, remember it, go away.
I want to get logged in.
Here's another place to look at.
Beware that this is clearly somebody can
walk up to your machine and potentially see your passwords.
Yes, in this case, you needed to authenticate.
That's not necessarily true for all browsers.
So use this feature to remember your.
Passwords with some caution.
But if you've lost a password like we've
lost our Facebook password here, then this becomes an option for potentially maybe.
Recovering the password that was last remembered.
Now, the last thing I want to.
Show you is simply that the simplest.
Solution to this entirely, of course, is.
To have a password manager.
Because that way you don't have to remember your passwords.
You can see here last pass has.
Filled in my email address for this.
Account, my password for this account,
and I can simply log in password vaults, saving your password across multiple
different platforms, all the different browsers, they're the way to go.
That way you never have to worry about having lost your password.
You still need to set up recovery information and keep it current.
Because without it, if somebody hacks your.
Account and changes your password without your.
Permission, the recovery information is
your only hope of being able to get back in.
Without it, you can't.
I hope that's helpful.
I hope that helps you get back into your account.
If you've forgotten your password, I'd like.
To point out a specific article that.
I want to point you at.
That is: Twelve Steps to Keep From.
Getting Your Account Hacked.
It's askleo.com/2641.
For comments, for updates,
for related links, and more on this article, visit askleo.com/4388.
I'm Leo Notenboom and this is Askleo.com. Thanks for watching.