Have you been using real name on your profile or are you one of the few (probably millions or billions) that use an alias on your profile? And suddenly found yourself block from accessing your profile, chances are you have been one of the users who have been unfortunately banned due to Facebook's "real name policy".

The said policy has been drawing attention for the past months already. Online trolls have been taking advantage of this and have been reporting users. This lead to having seen many users of the social network suspended, even when they are in fact using their very own name.

Facebook's "real name" policy is a rule that the company is enforcing or rather requiring their users to use their real names or legal names on their Facebook profiles. The said policy is the social network's answer to online bullying and makes users more accountable. Most of the users affected by the policy are transgenders who have chosen a new name to be identified to match their new gender, also affected are drag queens and Native Americans.

A letter signed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Human Rights Watch, and ACLU of California has been sent with requests to fix or modify their policy. These groups have stated that the policy is culturally biased against transgender, people who have safety concerns about using their legal names or on some cases, those who have legal names that doesn't meet the standards of Facebook as a "real name".

This letter, together with a lot of criticisms that the latest policy has attracted, has been recently addressed. Facebook's Vice President of Growth Alex Schultz announced that they will have changes to the policy that will allow more room for the users to explain their name choices.

According to Schultz, Facebook would like to reduce the number of people who are asked to verify their names when they are in fact already using names that people already knew them for. Facebook will make it easier for users to confirm their names if necessary.

The latest changes will allow users to explain their name choices by having the opportunity to write to Facebook's Community Operations team, which in the past they didn't have. Reporting another user for having a fake name will now also require the "reporter" for more information to prove their claim. Schultz says that the changes to the policy will start rolling out this December.

Google's similar social network service Google+ which has also experienced the same trouble with a similar policy of theirs, has just decided last summer to just allow their users to have profiles that are not under their own name.