Tonight I tried logging into my Facebook account. I used the same computer that I'd used for well, everything. Facebook flashed me a message that my account was temporarily locked because I was logging in from an unfamiliar location and would only be unlocked if I jumped through certain hoops.
First, they threw a CAPTCHA challenge at me. In their efforts to make CAPTCHA text unreadable to 'bots, they've also made it virtually unreadable to humans! But I got through this first hoop.
The second hoop was my "security question". I answered it as best I knew how, but I seem to have forgotten the exact answer. And unlike your password there's no way of resetting or recovering it. Sometimes you can pass a photo challenge - that is, they flash pictures of your friends and ask you to identify them, but they did not offer that option this time.
No other site throws these absurd security measures at you (save Yahoo, but we're used to them sucking anyway, aren't we?). Not Google, not even Paypal. Only Facebook pulls this crap. Support? They never heard of it. There's no one you can contact to remedy a jam such as this one. And even though I was perfectly able to log into the e-mail associated with that Facebook account, well, they offered no way to use that to unlock my account.
Bottom line - I am totally cut off from my TMF friends on Facebook.
First, they threw a CAPTCHA challenge at me. In their efforts to make CAPTCHA text unreadable to 'bots, they've also made it virtually unreadable to humans! But I got through this first hoop.
The second hoop was my "security question". I answered it as best I knew how, but I seem to have forgotten the exact answer. And unlike your password there's no way of resetting or recovering it. Sometimes you can pass a photo challenge - that is, they flash pictures of your friends and ask you to identify them, but they did not offer that option this time.
No other site throws these absurd security measures at you (save Yahoo, but we're used to them sucking anyway, aren't we?). Not Google, not even Paypal. Only Facebook pulls this crap. Support? They never heard of it. There's no one you can contact to remedy a jam such as this one. And even though I was perfectly able to log into the e-mail associated with that Facebook account, well, they offered no way to use that to unlock my account.
Bottom line - I am totally cut off from my TMF friends on Facebook.