Facebook: Is There A Problem Here?: Facebook

Showing posts with label Facebook. Show all posts

20131114

Problem ID: 7897090109297597096
Entered by: Ben Simo

The server has found your request confusing

#Facebook has one of my favorite error messages of all time: "The server found your request confusing..." pic.twitter.com/7zrp1Ujr31
— don (@citarella) November 5, 2013

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20120601

Problem ID: 3096601854075557475
Entered by: Ben Simo

Facebook down

There were reports of a Facebook outage yesterday, May 31st. However, I seem to have encountered another outage this morning. Facebook was down for me this morning, June 1st, for at least a half hour.

Was it down for you?

“Let me tell you the difference between Facebook and everyone else,

we don’t crash EVER!”

– an actor reciting a script,

pretending to be Mark Zuckerberg,

in the movie The Social Network

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20120307

Problem ID: 6305610789720838722
Entered by: Ben Simo

What's happening, Facebook?

Perhaps it is just me. The Facebook header bar is behaving just like Twitter's header bar: they scroll down with the page.

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20110927

Problem ID: 7067974469339416084
Entered by: Ben Simo

16 of 15

@NationalAD tweets: #thewayiseeit #Facebook should worry about fixing the little stuff first...can you spot the obvious error?

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20110913

Problem ID: 896959901285016749
Entered by: Ben Simo

The answer you submitted is not allowed

Facebook asks me to update my security information. I dutifully give them the requested information. Then they ask for an answer to a security question. I enter the name of the street I lived on when I was 8 years old.

Facebook tells me that answer is not allowed. I am not allowed to have lived where I lived when I was 8 years old?

So, I look for another security question to answer. The choices are few. Other than my driver's license number, which of these are questions only I can answer?

Might any of my Facebook friends -- many who knew me as a child -- know the answers to any of these?

Do I really want my security question to be something my mother can answer?

There is nothing secure about securing my account with answers to any of these security questions.

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20100614

Problem ID: 1887316030770012588
Entered by: Ben Simo

Are you sure you want to delete Facebook?

I only wanted to remove a Facebook widget from my iGoogle page. However, the possibility of completely deleting Facebook from the planet is intriguing. ;-)

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20100223

Problem ID: 8501665130949386165
Entered by: Ben Simo

You haven't texted us in 60 days.

I've been getting these for several days in spite of replying "on" to several of them.

I did reply "on" and was still shut off.

On further investigation, I see that the auto-capitalization feature of my phone's virtual keyboard had changed my "on" text message to "On". I then text a manually forced "on", and get confirmation that the texts will continue.

Maybe it is just me, but I don't think automated keyword processing should be case-sensitive when users are entering the text on cell phones.

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20100208

Problem ID: 6188682487092634466
Entered by: Anonymous

Bonus Logout Action

"Formspring.me logs you out of Facebook AND formspring when you click login if you've logged in with Facebook." - @iamdez

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20100113

Problem ID: 3290902515236016709
Entered by: Ben Simo

Please try again at a later time or right now

@yinteractive: What a nonsensical error message from Facebook

I choose right now.

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20091231

Problem ID: 535783959480094681
Entered by: Ben Simo

Hang on tharrr matey!

Facebook errors are more tolerable (although even more ambiguous than normal) with the language set to Pirate. :-)

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20091229

Problem ID: 2371153308134958135
Entered by: Ben Simo

TEMPORARY SNAFU

I like the message explaining that even the best software has issues. The apology is nice. The not-so-serious and non-technical huge TEMPORARY SNAFU header may help manage user frustration.

However, isn't TEMPORARY SNAFU an oxymoron?

SNAFU is an acronym that came into usage nearly 70 years ago in the US Army: Situation Normal: All Fouled Up (with Fouled being a non-offensive substitution for something you can figure out.) If being fouled up is the normal state, is it really temporary?

So, I am a bit surprised to see Coca-Cola create an application with implied profanity and chaos in error messages.

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20091223

Problem ID: 3264566471295074500
Entered by: Ben Simo

Ads on top of features

To help ensure the advertisements on your Facebook application get clicked, put the ads on top of the functionality. Although, it could encourage your users to never use your application again.

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20091222

Problem ID: 7974431098002339400
Entered by: Ben Simo

Object cannot be liked

Tweeted by aalgar.

It appears Facebook doesn't allow users to like things that aren't accessible.

However, this message seems to be displayed if a user clicks the like link on something they have access to see that was posted by someone who is not their Facebook friend.

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20090219

Problem ID: 7809794983999414196
Entered by: Ben Simo

Help! I can't find my ⅝ key!

Submitted by Yuval K. See source Digg post by Louie Baur.

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Usability Heuristics

• Visibility of system status Visibility of system status: The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within reasonable time.

• Match between system and the real world Match between system and the real world: The system should speak the users' language, with words, phrases and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms. Follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order.

• User control and freedom User control and freedom: Users often choose system functions by mistake and will need a clearly marked "emergency exit" to leave the unwanted state without having to go through an extended dialogue. Support undo and redo.

• Consistency and standards Consistency and standards: Users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing. Follow platform conventions.

• Error prevention Error prevention: Even better than good error messages is a careful design which prevents a problem from occurring in the first place. Either eliminate error-prone conditions or check for them and present users with a confirmation option before they commit to the action.

• Recognition rather than recall Recognition rather than recall: Minimize the user's memory load by making objects, actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from one part of the dialogue to another. Instructions for use of the system should be visible or easily retrievable whenever appropriate.

• Flexibility and efficiency of use Flexibility and efficiency of use: Accelerators -- unseen by the novice user -- may often speed up the interaction for the expert user such that the system can cater to both inexperienced and experienced users. Allow users to tailor frequent actions.

• Aesthetic and minimalist design Aesthetic and minimalist design: Dialogues should not contain information which is irrelevant or rarely needed. Every extra unit of information in a dialogue competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their relative visibility.

• Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors: Error messages should be expressed in plain language (no codes), precisely indicate the problem, and constructively suggest a solution.

• Help and documentation Help and documentation: Even though it is better if the system can be used without documentation, it may be necessary to provide help and documentation. Any such information should be easy to search, focused on the user's task, list concrete steps to be carried out, and not be too large.

Consistency Heuristics

-F amiliar Familiar: The product is not consistent with the pattern of any familiar problem.

E xplainable Explainable: The product is explainable.

W orld World: The product is consistent with the real world.

H istory History: The present version of the product is consistent with past versions of it.

I mage Image: The product is consistent with an image that the organization wants to project.

C omparable Products Comparable Products: The product is consistent with comparable systems.

C laims Claims: The product is consistent with what important people say it’s supposed to be.

U ser Expectations User Expectations: The product is consistent with what users want.

P roduct Product: Each element of the product is consistent with comparable elements in the same system.

P urpose Purpose: The product is consistent with its purposes, both explicit and implicit.

S tatutes Statutes: The product is consistent with applicable laws.

FAILURE Heuristics

F unctional Functional: The error detecting, reporting, and handling functions properly.

A ppropriate Appropriate: Errors are reported at the appropriate time in an appropriate manner.

I mpact Impact: The impact of the failure is communicated to those impacted.

L og Log: The error is appropriately logged; or not logged.

U ser Interface User Interface: The error is reported in the user interface in terms that the user understands.

R ecovery Recovery: The user is informed of what they need to do to recover from the error.

E motions Emotions: The error handling and reporting has a positive influence on user emotions.

Security Vulnerabilities

1. Injection Injection: Injection flaws occur when untrusted data is sent to an interpreter as part of a command. The attacker’s hostile data can trick the interpreter into executing unintended commands or accessing data without authorization.

2. Broken authentication and session management Broken authentication and session management: Application functions related to authentication and session management are often not implemented correctly, allowing attackers to compromise passwords, keys, or session tokens, or to exploit other implementation flaws to assume other users’ identities.

3. Cross-Site Scripting Cross-Site Scripting (XSS): XSS flaws occur whenever an application takes untrusted data and sends it to a web browser without proper validation or escaping. XSS allows attackers to execute scripts in the victim’s browser which can hijack user sessions, deface web sites, or redirect the user to malicious sites.

4. Insecure Direct Object References Insecure Direct Object References: A direct object reference occurs when a developer exposes a reference to an internal implementation object, such as a file, directory, or database key. Without an access control check or other protection, attackers can manipulate these references to gain unauthorized access to data.

5. Security Misconfiguration Security Misconfiguration: Good security requires having a secure configuration defined and deployed for the application, frameworks, application server, web server, database server, and platform. Secure settings should be defined, implemented, and maintained, as defaults are often insecure. Additionally, software should be kept up to date.

6. Sensitive Data Exposure Sensitive Data Exposure: Many web applications do not properly protect sensitive data, such as credit cards, tax IDs, and authentication credentials. Attackers may steal or modify such weakly protected data to conduct credit card fraud, identity theft, or other crimes. Sensitive data deserves extra protection such as encryption at rest or in transit, as well as special precautions when exchanged with the browser.

7. Missing Function Level Access Control Missing Function Level Access Control: Most web applications verify function level access rights before making that functionality visible in the UI. However, applications need to perform the same access control checks on the server when each function is accessed. If requests are not verified, attackers will be able to forge requests in order to access functionality without proper authorization.

8. Cross-Site Request Forgery Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF): A CSRF attack forces a logged-on victim’s browser to send a forged HTTP request, including the victim’s session cookie and any other automatically included authentication information, to a vulnerable web application. This allows the attacker to force the victim’s browser to generate requests the vulnerable application thinks are legitimate requests from the victim.

9. Using Components with Known Vulnerabilities Using Components with Known Vulnerabilities: Running software components with known vulnerabilities can compromise the vulnerable components and anything those components can access -- undermining defenses.

10. Unvalidated Redirects and Forwards Unvalidated Redirects and Forwards: Using untrusted data, without validation, to determine the destination of redirects and forwards can enable attackers to redirect victims to phisihing or malware sites.

Is There A Problem Here?

20131114

The server has found your request confusing

20120601

Facebook down

20120307

What's happening, Facebook?

20110927

16 of 15

20110913

The answer you submitted is not allowed

20100614

Are you sure you want to delete Facebook?

20100223

You haven't texted us in 60 days.

20100208

Bonus Logout Action

20100113

Please try again at a later time or right now

20091231

Hang on tharrr matey!

20091229

TEMPORARY SNAFU

20091223

Ads on top of features

20091222

Object cannot be liked

20090219

Help! I can't find my ⅝ key!

Problem or no problem?

Usability Heuristics

Consistency Heuristics

FAILURE Heuristics

Security Vulnerabilities

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