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Fedbook: Watch As Facebook Holds Your Profile Hostage…

May 5, 2010

New terms mean new demands. And the new demands are clear:

“Register this computer

Please take a moment to register this computer by choosing a name you’ll remember later. You’ll receive a notification confirming that you registered and logged in from here. Please note that if you clear your cookies you may need to reregister this computer.”

The “yesterday” date mark is May 4th, 2010 and there are no other topics regarding this new(?) demand before this date anywhere online of what we could find, in any forum. This new “security measure” seems pretty damn recent.

Don’t believe it? Well it happened to us today!

Before “registering” anything we’ve given Facebook the opportunity to answer for themselves. We sent them an email, “Why are we having to register a computer we’ve used for the last five years to log in to Facebook today?” What do you want to bet two outcomes – 1. no reply or 2. a form reply claiming “security” due to phishing and malware…

We’ve also taken the liberty to write Senators Schumer, Franken, Bennet, Begich, and our own State’s Attorney Generals as well on this and one thing is for sure – we aren’t registering SHIT until we get a response from someone. (see edit)

You know, there are other ways of dealing with “hacked accounts” instead of gathering even more information than usual, on every computer that connects to Facebook. It’s not like they don’t log our IP’s.

The splash page has made it clear though, if you want to get onto their network to see your information, you have no choice but to give them even more information about your home location than has ever been needed in the past. (And quite frankly, should not be needed now.) There really is no excuse for this but let’s see them try to make up a good one.

EDIT: Of course we got the form letters today from Bennet and FBook but we also read the link above’s new development – which indicates that the logging of your computer’s ID issue is due to yet another new setting in the overly confusing plethora of new, rearranged, and reworded Facebook settings. Remember the slider settings? Those were good times. Anyway, this new setting could have been automatically changed for you, or you could have changed it not knowing what it does because it’s not very clear in an explanation on what it does and how it works.

In fact this is what the setting says word for word:

“To help keep your Facebook account as safe as possible, we can notify you when your account is accessed from a computer or mobile device that you haven’t used before.

Would you like to receive notifications for logins from new devices?”

Sounds harmless enough to check “Yes” for but it really isn’t because it’s not 100% truthful about what it does.

Ultimately, there’s nothing in that explanation about “Team Zuckerberg” locking your ass out of your account till Facebook registers your computer. You know, the computer you’ve been consistently using to log into FB for the last five years. Even though the setting says “…computers or mobile device that you haven’t used before.”

So if you’re thinking about using their “security settings,” you’d better think again because THIS is what happens.

Anyway, if you’re locked out then that’s it. You are locked the fuck out till you name your computer in their records. After getting the form letters we registered our computers – this was my registration result:

UP NEXT… On the topic of new demands and forcing you to do shit you don’t want to do: Facebook has been on the offensive about prominently linking your likes and interests, to your account. You can be dicking around, emailing team members, managing a group and the next thing you know you’re being told, not asked, to link to some malarkey:

What WE do in this situation is just hit the “refresh” button and it goes away. That’s our “No” button. Refresh = no. It works at the moment. But if you think that’s all you’ll see of that sheisty message… believe us – you’ll be seeing it often.

Facebook is being relentless about wrangling its little bundles of commodities [YOU] into well behaving rows of information to present to the Wall Street Journal, Sephora, Scribd, and other ass-tastic corporations on their buddy list.