Facebook > Chase

I was sitting on this post for a few weeks, trying to come up with something else to say in it. I'm just publishing it as-is.

When I logged onto Facebook for the first time here, Facebook was understandably suspicious of why Charlie Kinzer was suddenly logging in from India. Its security measure, though, was ingenious. Rather than having me verify through an email, or sending me an SMS message like most places would do, they had me identify photos of my friends. It’d display 3 photos of a particular friend, and would give me a random list of friends from which to choose, including the right one. It did this for 4-5 friends, and it managed to pick only good friends of mine, as opposed to people I’d met once and with whom I’d never interacted on Facebook. It was a great verification system. I handled it with ease, but no one else could have done it. Even a close friend of mine probably could not have, since no particular friend would be able to identify my friends from college, law school, and high school. Only I could do that.

This was also something I could do quickly and easily. Compare this to the credit and debit cards that just shut down the moment I tried to use them here. Chase required me to call them, and not on a 24-hour line, either. I was only able to get Google Voice running on a decent connection, which I didn't really have at home. Chase still won't let me use the card from an Indian IP--only when I log into the U of I's server, thus allowing me to surf from an American IP address, did Chase let me book my ticket to Delhi. Ironic, because they now supposedly know that I'm in India. Shouldn't they be declining anything purchased in America? Anyway, this round definitely goes to Facebook, and not Chase.