facebook login search results

Facebook is currently the most popular social networking website, with over 400 million active users worldwide. It was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004, back then a student at Harvard University, with the help of some of his roommates. Until 2006 the registration was limited initially only to Harvard students, followed by other colleges, then by any university students and high school students. In 2006 Facebook registration was opened to anyone over the age of 13 (not living in one of the countries where Facebook is banned).

Facebook users can create Fan Pages (for websites, products, …) and User Groups, but most important they can add friends and communicate with these through instant messaging, email, or by posting/reading from each other’s personal Facebook profile pages (“Walls”).

The official login page for Facebook is facebook.com. If you have tried accessing it but could not do so, this means that it was blocked either by your employer (Facebook was banned in several major companies to avoid loss of productivity), or at a national level as some countries had blocked Facebook intermittently over time (China, Vietnam, Iran, Syria). In order to login to Facebook:

• Visit http://www.facebook.com and you’ll see in the top right corner of the window a Username and Password section
• Input your username, which consists of the email address you used when you registered

• Enter your password and click on Login (optionally you can select the “Keep me logged in” option so that if you don’t clear your temporary files you won’t have to enter your username/password again even if you close and restart the browser

One common Facebook login problem is forgetting your password. You’ll know that’s the case if after pressing Login you get the message “The password you entered is incorrect. Facebook passwords are case sensitive. Please try again.” In this case the advice is to check again your password and make sure you entered it correctly (see if caps lock is not on). If you’re certain that you entered it correctly but still get the Incorrect password message, use this page to request a password reset: https://login.facebook.com/reset.php (you’ll have to enter a captcha, and you will receive an email with a link that you have to click to reset your password – it’s important to have access to the email that you use when you first registered with Facebook).

Another common problem is a random error that Facebook returns either when trying to log in or immediately after. Usually you’ll recognize the error by its Oops message “Something went wrong. We’re working on getting this fixed as soon as we can. You may be able to try again.” If this happens the best way is to restart the browser and try again, worse come to worse clear your browser cache and cookies, as instructed by Facebook here - http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=742

Last but not least, you might get an error while logging in from an unfamiliar location. If it happens, you’ll receive a message that says “You are signing in from an unfamiliar location. For your security, please verify your account. Learn More.” and right under that you’ll see a Security Check that lets you select your birthday and try to login again. If this happens then do what they say and enter the birthday you first selected when registering with Facebook – if you don’t remember what you used then don’t try logging in from that location anymore and try again from your default location. This message is annoying but it’s for your own protection against phishing scams that try to collect your Facebook login.

First of all never login to Facebook by clicking on a link in the email, as it might be a phishing attempt. And if you do click on a link that points to Facebook, make sure that the url is the correct one before entering your username and password. You can avoid phishing attempts by installing add-ons for your browser such as WOT (for Firefox) or McAffee SiteAdvisor (IE and Firefox). You can also make your life easier and not having to enter your Facebook login each time, by using a password manager such as Roboform.