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Facebook Deactivates Woman’s Account For Being Named Isis

A California woman had her Facebook account temporarily deactivated this week just because her real name is Isis Anchalee.

The engineer from San Francisco was unable to log into her Facebook account shortly after the recent terrorist attacks in Paris. She was eventually given access back, but the situation highlights Facebook’s problem with real names versus names that are determined to be fake. Facebook’s policy is that profile names must be able to be verified by identification and should be what you are called in real life.

Isis Anchalee used Twitter to tweet directly to Facebook that her real name actually is Isis. Her tweets were shared and eventually Facebook responded to Anchalee.

BGR reports that Facebook researcher Omid Farivar informed Anchalee via Twitter that Facebook was working on fixing the issue and apologized for the mix up.

Isis, sorry about this. I don’t know what happened. I’ve reported it to the right people and we’re working on fixing it.

Isis Anchalee was already known on social media prior to this recent Facebook issue. According to NBC New York, Anchalee was responsible for starting a viral campaign. The #ILookLikeAnEngineer hashtag was started earlier this year to bring attention to the issue of bias and sexism in tech fields.

Isis may not have had an issue with Facebook at all had the name of the terror group been ISIL instead of ISIS. The Washington Post reported last year that there was a push to change the name from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

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