Fidgety while my husband drove us to the airport last Friday, I checked my email. A bald message from Instagram: my personal account had been locked due to “suspicious activity”. Here’s a recovery link.

Turned out the only thing vaguely suss was I’d changed a security setting the day before. That was enough to have Meta on full alert. Thanks, I guess. But since then, no amount of link-clicking or troubleshooting-page scouring has unlocked what’s been mine since 2012.

How much longer could I spend dodging posts about gut-health gummies and Trinny Woodall’s eyeshadow? Credit: Flavio Brancaleone

Thirteen years of life moments – kids in everything from face paint to graduation gowns, the first photo ever taken of me and Chris together (off our gourds in a Canberra pub), ex-husbands, ex-haircuts – made inaccessible by the cold efficiency of Mark Zuckerberg’s customer service department.

My first instinct was panic. My resting heart rate shot to 87. Then: admin mode. I filled out forms that vanished into the Meta abyss, sent pleading emails to nobody. Paid $80 to the local IT........

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