Facebook “Session Expired”

In this guide, we’ll cover a few ways to get around the frustrating “session expired” error sometimes seen on the popular social media platform Facebook. This error is common and seen across a variety of users, from the day-to-day to those who collect information from the site at scale- and those in between.

What is an “Expired Session”

An expired session commonly occurs when the login session has been rendered invalid or expired. Not to worry, this happens sometimes. The platform will use this as a method to ensure the account is valid and connected to Facebook- checking if it is active within its online services.

As a result of this, you’ll be sent back to the login screen. You could be mid-doom-scroll or carefully scraping data. Either way, you’ll need to log in again.

What Causes an “Expired Session”

Here’s a small breakdown of the common causes of an expired session. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but these are a good place to start when trying to get back online/

Is Facebook the Problem?

The first and best place to start is to see if it's a Facebook problem. As extensive as the resources are, even a tech giant like Facebook will experience the odd “technical difficulty”. Sites like downdetector are a good place to start. The bad news is, if Facebook is down, you’ll need to wait until the service is alive and healthy again until you can log in.

Login Time Expired

Upon logging in, Facebook will create a “session”, and this will be timed. If you didn’t know already, A "session" in refers to the time of interaction between a user and a server, where authentication or connection is maintained, usually via cookies or tokens. It tracks activity until the user logs out or the session expires. If you’re sitting idle too long, Facebook will log out, usually as a security measure. This protects those who forget to log out on shared or public devices.

Heightened Security

As scraping can be a cat-and-mouse game between client and target, it’s important to remember how difficult it is to collect data at scale from a giant like Facebook. If their anti-bot notices anything unusual, it could log you out to ensure their systems are protected.

Browser Extensions

Similar to the point above, specific browser extensions can raise flags at Facebook, causing you to be logged out. If you’re a frequent extension user or have experienced the issue for the first time after installing a new extension, it might be wise to disable these extensions and log in again. Specific extensions like CAPTCHA solvers can cause these errors.

First Steps to Fixing

Now we’ve identified a few of the common triggers, how do we solve the problem? After all, we all just want to use Facebook uninterrupted- whatever the case. These points are most applicable for those not scraping. If you’re a web scraper or automation specialist, keep scrolling to see what else can be done to fix your sessions.

Logging In and Out

As simple as it sounds, sometimes a quick relog will fix everything. If you’ve experienced the session expired error, you’ll have to do this regardless. With any luck, this is all you need to keep on going.

Clearing Cookies and Cache

As we mentioned earlier, Facebook session times can be maintained through the use of cookies. Sometimes, these cookies expire. Clearing the cookies and cache of your browser and device can sometimes empty out anything bad, causing your sessions to be invalidated.

Updating

If you’re using a mobile device, an outdated app can sometimes cause problems, including invalid sessions. It’s in everyone's best interest to ensure all apps are updated, as updates often include important information and security fixes. If you’ve experienced an increased number of invalid sessions, check your device app store to see if there’s an update.

Fixing Expired Sessions when Scraping

If you’re web scraping, you might find Facebook using invalid sessions to stagger scrapers. There’s a few methods we can deploy to help navigate this issue and ensure you’re scraping uninterrupted.

Refreshing Sessions

Refreshing sessions by logging in and out periodically can help swerve antibot measures by Facebook; logging in for too long could cause suspicious activity flags. By logging in and out, you’re refreshing the session of that account. You might also want to build this into your scraper, automating the logging in and out process.

Scraping Time

When web scraping, we always want to follow the “golden rules” of web scraping- which we touched upon here. One of which is to be in and out as quickly as possible. Spending as little time as possible to get the data you need will ensure you’re causing as minimal disruption/load as possible and reduce the risk of expiring your sessions.

Multi Accounting and Multi Sessions

Distribute your scraping tasks across several Facebook accounts or sessions. Rather than depending on a single account or session, rotate between different ones to keep at least one active. Using multiple accounts or sessions minimises the risk of session expiration and boosts your chances of maintaining continuous access to Facebook so you can continue scraping.

Using Proxies

Using a social media proxy is another golden rule of web scraping but an excellent way to avoid detection and having your sessions terminated. By using a proxy, you’re making use of a wide range of IP addresses; this helps reduce sessions being ended by Facebook, as their systems will be unable to tie a large number of requests to a single IP address.

What’s important to note is the proxy type too. If you’re a mobile app developer, using a mobile proxy may help your sessions because the IPs that the requests come through will be from mobile devices.

Rampage provides access to all of these under a single dashboard. You’re given access to 10 residential providers, with a combined total of over 400M IP addresses. Not only this but proxies can be geo-located anywhere in the world, allowing you to work from anywhere at any time. To learn more, see the available providers we have here.

Conclusion

You’re now armed with the knowledge to fix the “expired session” problem you might encounter using Facebook. While frustrating to encounter, sessions are essential for any online service to protect both it and its users.