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I'm not the man they say I am.

Or am I?

I've had a Facebook profile for a few years now, mainly to keep up with family, friends and former classmates, and in my job as a journalist.

Until last month, when Facebook told me to go away.

My wife was the first to notice my absence — her Facebook profile stated she was still married, just not to me. She looked further and found that I was no longer among her friends.

I tried to log in to Facebook but got a message that my account had been disabled, citing that I was using a fake name.

Never mind that I've only ever used one name on the account (and it's the one on my birth certificate). Never mind that both my e-mail address and my personalized URL both contained my real name.

The Facebook police determined I wasn't me.

How they came to that conclusion is a mystery. I didn't get any notification that my account had been banned. I appealed their decision through a Web form that included uploading a scanned image of my driver's license (after first making sure the form wasn't some phishing scam).

Despite the name on my license matching the name on the account, Facebook wasn't impressed.

"Facebook requires users to provide their real first and last names," The Facebook Team stated in a 3:04 a.m. e-mail the next day. "Impersonating anyone or anything is prohibited ... Unfortunately, we will not be able to re-activate this account for any reason. This decision is final. Thanks for your understanding."

They might have understood, but I didn't. Who was I? And, even more baffling, there was no way to find out.

Good luck trying to appeal the appeal or contact a real person at the company.

There is no contact information for Facebook on its website. No customer support e-mail addresses or phone number. The Facebook Blog — the closest thing I could find to interaction by them on their site — requires you to have a working Facebook account to post a message.

Googling my issue led to articles and blog posts about people who encountered similar issues over the years, and had little luck communicating with the company.

I'm sure bombarding their other scant Web forms with the problem or tracking down some poor Facebook worker on LinkedIn may have led me somewhere, but it wasn't worth the time.

I found the whole experience more humorous than annoying.

I was never a heavy user of the site, and I knew that I could rebuild my identity there again without too much trouble.

I know the service is free, but the lack of any customer support was a bit surprising:

There was no warning that I had broken a rule.

The early morning reply from Facebook makes me wonder if anybody even looked at the appeal form.

And there was no way to explain the situation to anybody.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently announced plans to donate $100 million to Newark, N.J., public schools. Great for the school district. But certainly the company can afford to create a customer service e-mail account and pay some people to staff it.

I'm back on Facebook now, having started over from scratch.

Just don't let them know that.

Michael Grossman is director of new media content for the News & Record. Good luck finding his contact information online. Just kidding. Contact him at 373-7092 or michael.grossman@news-record.com.