Sharing a cat photo can get you banned from Facebook

Think twice before sharing a photo of a cute cat on Facebook.

Friday night, Chennai-based technology blogger Varun Krishnan had his Facebook account blocked for sharing what seemed to be a totally normal cat photo with his friend.

"It might sound stupid but this just happened to me," Krishnan told Mashable India. "I was chatting with friends, got one cat image on WhatsApp, it was so cute that I sent it to a friend."

He knew something was up when Facebook Messenger immediately asked him to re-enter his credentials.

This is something that happens when a photo violates Facebook's terms of service, but Facebook didn't immediately tell him why it happened.

Here's the incriminating cat photo:

It seems like a totally innocent photo of a cat wearing a suit, but when you look closer, you can see that the photo has blurred text in a foreign language to the side.

According to reports, other people have tried to share the same photo, and their Facebook accounts have been disabled as well.

Facebook reactivated Krishnan's and apologized, but they did not explain what was bad about the picture.

"Our team found this was a mistake & have restored your account. We're sorry for the trouble this caused you," Facebook Security Communications team told FoneArena.

There's no telling what caused the issue, but it would probably be best to avoid sharing the image on Facebook for a while.

See more social posts about this story: