Sunday, January 16, 2011
Facebook and added security cell phone features
FB kept nagging me that my security was low. I finally clicked. It wanted me to add an extra email address and verify it, tell it my cell carrier (not phone number) THEN text the letter F to a special code number and input the code that is returned and then to choose a secret question and the answer. They should TELL you up front what is involved so there is no mystery.
I hesitated for SO LONG but then I decided to at least SEE what it would ask me. We are right in being wary of such things as scams. I saw that it wanted an additional email address which makes perfect sense. They send a confirmation and you click on it which is simple. The very NEXT link which I will post is a detailed explanation of HOW one uses the cell phone registration. By the way I had NO IDEA what the cell phone thing was about until I googled on this link ... oh here..
From what I can see so far, let us say you want to log into Facebook from a computer which may not be secure (e.g. at an Airport). You TEXT the special FB number from a cell phone number which you have REGISTERED with FB and it texts back to you a TEMPORARY login code which will be good for only 20 minutes. That means that you can log in from an non-secure computer using a disposable password. I had NO IDEA why I was registering my cell phone. THEN I got curious and googled on FACEBOOK PHONE SECURITY and found the above link. The third thing is a secret question like who was your first grade teacher. I found that feature lacking in the sense that you cannot make up your OWN question.
The way I see it, I greatly value my FB, so I am taking a risk if I DO click on extra security BUT I am taking an equal risk if I do NOT. Had I not clicked I would have ONLY the access through my one registered email account. Should I lose that email account then my FB is more compromised. The one irritating thing I just noticed is that NOW FB thinks I want it to TEXT me each and every response to threads. Now I have unlimited text on my plan but I DO NOT want that and now I have to go through hell to find out if I can turn that off. Another time, when I put FB on my blackberry I noticed that it was UPDATING my calendar with bullshit events, and I had to go through hell to turn off that feature, and these APPS may presumptuous and intrusive behavior the DEFAULT behavior.
OK, so I go to ACCOUNT -> NOTIFICATIONS and since I have just registered my cell phone, I see a column with a cell phone icon and check boxes so I can control how much notification I do and do not receive. So now I am cool with that. Under Account-> MOBILE it shows my cell phone number as activated and allows me to activate an additional phone number and presumably delete an old phone number so that mystery is solved. I seriously think I will be better off having extra email accounts activated and having my cell phone. One fellow the other day, age 26 (and I am 62, he observed that irony) said that his FB account is BLOATED and he must cull it, so I asked how many he had and he said 106 friends so I said I have 1070 and 60 to 100 are online at any given time. It all depends upon how much your FB MEANS to you. I had to test a social networking aggregator browser yesterday which allows you to simultaneously log into Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, Youtube, and one or more Twitter accounts. I used my wife's FB because she admits she would care less if she lost it, whereas I would care a LOT if I lost mine. The aggregator browser is called FLOCK and it installs for free on your computer. I know of some people who are VERY active in LinkedIn (with a paid PREMIUM account) as well as Facebook and Twitter so for them it makes sense. I have TWO twitter accounts, ReadGreatBooks and zen_forum and I hardly use them. I FEED into ReadGreatBooks with my http://williambuell.posterous.com/ account so someone who wanted to follow my posts could do so by following that Twitter account. I could see someone who was a real wheeler-dealer with FB and LinkedIn and Twitter really wanting to have it all aggregated in one Flock browser but I dont think I need that.
You are damned if you do and damned if you don't. I remember the very first time some account asked for my gmail password and that was as alien a concept as a glory hole. But now you get used to legitimate apps having access to that sort of thing under certain circumstances. I have to trust posterous.com by giving it logins to each account that it feeds. I do not give it FB or Wordpress because #1 those are the two that I value the most and #2 I do my primary posting and thinking and conversing in FB and if something is of interest and could stand alone as a blog then I gmail it to posterous.com and it feeds as tinyurl into Plurk/Sitaram and Twitter ReadGreatBooks and a blogspot that I hardly used before (I think greatbooksprogram.blogspot.com) .. and also identi.ca/williambuell and williambuell.tumblr.com so what I have is REDUNDANCY and if one account disappears or the provider goes belly up then I still have something else AND I can backup both wordpress and blogspot (and now one can backup Facebook). At a certain point you HAVE to trust some of these applications. I finally had the joy of getting a FB ad on my page for something LGBTQ related. I say that because I have worked hard to have some LGBTQ friends on FB and I want that, I want Muslim friends, I want Atheist friends (except dont piss me off TOO much), I even want Conservative Republican friends. We should not silo ourselves among only our own kind because they we shall never grow and others shall never grow.
