Facebook Fail

Posted by Martin R on May 14, 2010
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Facebook has turned up security a notch and effectively locked me out when I’m on the road.

I have hundreds of Fb contacts that I don’t actually know and wouldn’t recognise if I met them in the street. Mention their names to me and they ring no bell. This is partly because of this blog, partly because skeptics around the world like to have exotic Scandy contacts. Now, Facebook notes that somebody’s trying to log onto my account from an unfamiliar location. Imagine what happens when it starts to show me pictures of random people from my contact list, with a selection of seven names each to choose from.

No. Clue. I mean, people get tagged in images on Fb where you can barely see their faces. And in many cases I wouldn’t know even if I could see their faces clearly.

So I hope Facebook goes back to the drawing board on this one.

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Comments

  1. #1 ArchAsa
    May 14, 2010

    One wonders if the people who code Facebook actually use it themselves!? Maybe they just don’t have any friends…

    Ok, great idea to have extra security measures like this, but why not just ask the user to come up with the extra security question to answer himself? Like so many other services do?. Like – name of first pet, mother’s favourite food, movie that changed my life, whatever.

  2. #2 codero
    May 14, 2010

    I would opine that they have no business tracking your location in the first place.
    I got a similar message trying to access ebay from the office the other day (I know, I know). That now seems to be a known location, but then of course it is fairly stationary IP-wise.

  3. #3 eleanora.
    May 14, 2010

    So far I haven’t noticed that, but if it’s new today, I won’t have. Yesterday I was logged in at home and Uni simultaneously without a problem. I’ll see what happens when I try to log in from Uni next week.

  4. #4 PsyberDave
    May 14, 2010

    They should let you specify a core group of contacts that they pull the security picture from; or just use a security question that you set up in your profile.

  5. #5 David Petts
    May 14, 2010

    Fully agree- I’m currently in the USA at a conference. I was able to quickly grab a chance to log on to FB. Up comes this stupid new security check which I fail and I now can’t try again for an hour….grrr…. why does every time FB make a change is it for the worse…

  6. #6 murmel.jones
    May 14, 2010

    I had the same problems today when trying to login into facebook from my smartphone. Stupid facebook security folks…

  7. #7 paddy
    May 15, 2010

    Plus the glaring problem where many people do not use photos of themselves on their FB profiles, or quite often just photos of things. Yes it would appear that the people behind FB do not use it. I guess they have lives or something.

  8. #8 Bob Carlson
    May 15, 2010

    Yes it would appear that the people behind FB do not use it. I guess they have lives or something.

    I suppose that “something” wouldn’t necessarily include ethics. Given that the folks at Google don’t seem to, why would anyone expect it of the folks at Facebook? I wouldn’t touch Facebook with a 10 foot pole.

  9. #9 eleanora.
    May 19, 2010

    I signed in from uni today without any problems. Maybe they didn’t apply it in Aus, or there’ve had so many complaints that they’ve changed it already.

    BTW and talking of changing things, have you unchecked the share info box in your privacy settings recently?

  10. #10 emoticons facebook
    June 25, 2011

    Yaa!! It’s right!! Now days facebook become more strong and they applied me to process to verify my mobile number to keep my account safe this is because i am login sometimes from company and sometimes from job so ip is the issue said by facebook admin.