More and more users are discovering in recent days that their Facebook account has been locked and are prompted by a message of the popular social network to use their personal id data in order to unlock it.

Although this strange request has led many people to believe that they have fallen victim to a cyber-attack by hackers, the truth is that this verification process had been announced by the company a long time ago, in order to make sure that the profiles correspond to real people.

In fact, according to the official real name policy of the network, “the name a person uses should be their authentic identity; as their friends call them in real life and as their acceptable identification forms would show.”

In order to ensure user compliance with this term, the company has proceeded to temporarily lock user accounts. The user is then asked to provide a government ID for verification, a fact which has enraged many of the users who want to protect their personal data.