Wapsi Square Forum

Okay, was gonna go look at Paul's Facebook page, which means you have to have a Facebook account. So I tried to sign up.

It told me my name was fake.

And to prove my name wasn't fake, they require me to upload them a copy of a government issued ID card (drivers license, etc.)

NO. I will NOT send over the InterHackingNet such valuable information.

Sorry Paul, I know it's not your fault, but you've locked me out of some of your content. Oh, well.

...dude... I think you may have been stealthily redirected to a phishing website. Facebook shouldn't be allowed to ask for that kind of information. No way. That has Nigerian prince written all over it.

Try again on a friend's computer. If you get through, then your computer has something wrong with it.

I'm sorry, but Facebook and Google+ do pull that kind of shit.

... how I'm still holding a G+ account, I have no idea.

I just tried it now, and it did NOT ask me for it. I also did NOT use my real name. Deleted it right after, as I do not want/use FB or other social media. Google has never asked me for my real information(and I have more than one gmail). I agree with phishing.

They're using heuristics to "guesstimate" the veracity of names. Of course, those heuristics didn't seem to twig on my full name, "The Sidhekin".

So, NOTDilbert could easily register with a fake name, as long as it looks real. To the Facebook registration heuristics.

Of course, that would be a violation of Facebook's TOS ...

(My full name was not a violation of the gmail TOS when I signed up, and frankly, I'm not sure it is a violation of the G+ (or Google Account) TOS, but whether or not it is, I really don't need a G+ account. Except they converted my Picasa account to a G+ account. Without asking me. Bah!)

Violet Blue (the writer, not the porn star who used the same name) was bounced off G+ because they decided her name isn't real.

It's her legal name, guys.

To sign up for G+ for the unlikely chance that i might want to post YouTube comments, i formulated a name that translates into English as "Anonymous Comments"...

Sidhekin wrote:I'm sorry, but Facebook and Google+ do pull that kind of shit.

... how I'm still holding a G+ account, I have no idea.

No way! How can social networking companies ask for such sensitive data to be sent over such an insecure method of communication? How is this legal? What the... (are curse words allowed on these forums?) ?

The least they could do is ask you to call them. Have them read off your driver license number. Type it into a basic background check database (no arrest records, just name, gender, and birth year). That seems far more secure to me.

Yeah, a little googling shows FB has been doing this for years (even to some famous people) with complaints the whole time so don't expect it to change. I keep an account that I never use strictly so old friends can find me. No one ever looks for me, though.

Wow...I'm kind of glad that either they weren't doing this when I set up my Facebook account ages ago or my name is so pleasantly/genericly normal that they didn't assume it was fake. I'd have given the site The Finger and moved on...and while I don't like a lot of things about FB, it's been kind of nice for staying in touch with distant (on a map, not with regards to relationship) friends and family.

Sidhekin wrote:I'm sorry, but Facebook and Google+ do pull that kind of shit.

... how I'm still holding a G+ account, I have no idea.

Same here. My G+ account has the same name as my forum account here. "Ember Quill" doesn't sound even remotely like a real name, does it?

I finally DID sign up - by combining my first and middle names into one first name. They accepted it. but, that's not my 'real' name....

my mom typod her name (m instead of an N) and it wont allow me to change it and asks for the ID thing.

It can shove it where the sun dont shine before i do that :p but the fact my mom cant correct her name despite having 4 allowances to do so is annoying.

One nice way to track who's selling your details online is to sign up to various places with a slight mispelling (middle initial, etc) of your name. When you start getting spam with that letter, ya know who dun it!

The name that I used when I signed up for Facebook is my real name. . .in a sense. I took my actual legally-recognised first name and translated it into Latin and then English, using those as my listed first and last names. The system had no problem at all accepting either one, which given the Latin one makes me kind of wonder what Facebook considers to be "proper" names.

Many of the other personal details, such as my working as a wholesale supplier of small exploding animals or my extensive schooling in the art of dragon wrangling, are slightly less accurate. Slightly. (The dragon wrangling isn't actually part of any sort of formal education that I received certification for, but is instead the result of extensive personal hands-on experience).

Catawampus wrote:such as my working as a wholesale supplier of small exploding animals

Is this your YouTube channel?

I don't know what your problems with telling the Internet the truth are. My name is totally Carnivorous Plant in Chinese. Granted, the site does discriminate against those of us that live on moon bases on the dark side of the moon, but what do you expect from Government toadies?