I tried to give Facebook a chance

It's no secret that I have a long running dislike for Facebook. I hate the interface, poor search functionality, and vanilla plain look. However, since MySpace is running off all their users with the hideous and non-functional, Facebook wannabe 3.0 make-over, I decided to re-evaluated Facebook and give it another chance.

I updated my ancient Facebook profile with fresh information, began to participate, and was almost to the point where I could tolerate Facebook. Then, this morning, as I'm riding shotgun in a vehicle headed for Terre Haute, I thought I'd log in to my Facebook to show someone something. I loaded up the main page in the Bolt browser on my Bold and entered my username and password. Then, to my surprise, Facebook gives me a message saying that since I'm logging in from somewhere different than usual, I would have to go through extra security steps to log in. What? That's retarded! Why isn't a correct username and password sufficient? Ridiculous!

First, it required I solve a captcha, which is no big deal, but does nothing at all to help authenticate my identity, so it is utterly pointless. Secondly, they want me to answer my secret question. Uh oh. I never put real answers to my secret questions because that actually decreases security, and since I have the ability to never forget my username and password, I should never need to answer this question. Facebook disagrees.

So, as a fallback, I decide to log in to Facebook's mobile site instead. When I correctly enter my username and password, Facebook tells me there is a problem and I need to log in with a computer. Unbelievable. I'm locked out of my account because I attempted to (gasp) log in to Facebook from somewhere other than my home computer. I don't think I can verbalize how idiotic and inane this is. Since when are social networks tethered to your PC? If I have the correct username and password, I should be able to log in from any computer or device anywhere without having to jump through extra hoops. It's the user's responsibility to not be a retard and let their username and password be attained by others. Why should the incompetence of morons cause the rest of us to be subjected to this kind of overbearing and misguided security?

This experience may have exhausted the one chance I was going to give Facebook. I'm just glad Blogger doesn't act like that.
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Big Cray: Accept No Substitute

[Update, 12/29/2010]: I got on my computer and unlocked my account today, but, because Facebook thinks my account was "compromised," they forced me to change my password. I didn't think anything of it, and changed it, thinking I could change right back to the old one that I wanted to keep, knowing it was never actually compromised. No. When I tried to change back to my old password, Facebook told me I cannot use that password. They enforce a password history? Couldn't they at least give me a means by which to reset this password history? My hatred for Facebook grows.