For many people, social media has become much more than just a way to connect. Platforms like Facebook create a digital photo album cataloging important memories and moments throughout users’ lives.

This can make it all the more devastating when you are permanently locked out of an account.

Holbrook businessman Edwin Casanova lost access to his 15-year-old Facebook account after a hacker breached his profile a few months ago.

“The people that hacked it, they charged ads. Then what happens is Facebook locks it. If you can't get a resolve, which is nearly impossible, there’s basically nothing you can do,” he said. “If you log out, it says this account will be disabled in 14 days.”

Casanova sadly lost years of memories on his Facebook profile when he couldn’t recover his account on time.

“Thousands of memories are on there from my friends and family. My wedding pictures. Some pictures of my deceased father are on there,” he said.

News 12 social media manager Shawn Brown says cases like these are very common.

The hashtag #Facebookdisabledme contains hundreds of social media users expressing their frustration and inability to get help from the platform.

Brown says a way to deal with the issue is filing a request on Facebook.

“If you go to the Help tab, they will direct you to a forum that either has information that you can gather from other people who had the same issue, or they usually have a ticket that you can open up and report that something is wrong. From there, it goes to a group of people who may help you,” he said.

Brown also says setting up a two-factor authentication and checking social media pages for updates can help prevent being locked out.

“A lot of the instances I've seen lately have been just maybe somebody missed a message or didn't see that they have to authenticate their account to prove that it's real. In those cases, sometimes they get locked out when they pass the deadline,” he said.