02/02/09 - 7:28 p.m.

Okay, I'm really ticked.

I was getting all kinds of stuff done this morning, but then I got this email offering me $25 of free advertising on Facebook.

It was a legitimate ad, I think - but Facebook's sign-in process wouldn't let me enter the $25 code. (I'd entered the wrong CDC number the first time, and by the time I'd entered the right one, Facebook decided that I'd already used up my coupon).

I was ticked off by this crappy sign-in procedure. And then really mad when I realized Facebook was now going to charge $25 directly to my credit card. And there was no way to stop them - you can't "pause" a campaign until after Facebook has gone ahead and created it (and started charging your credit card).

I tried setting the campaign's limit to $0, but Facebook had disabled that as a valid option. So I dropped what I was doing to read Facebook's online help information. (I'd clicked the "help" button, but they'd hidden the "contact us" information so you'd have to read their online help documents first.) Eventually I realized that to stop the ad campaign that I'd wanted to create, I would have to delete the whole "advertiser" capability that I'd just set up on Facebook.

Which I did.

But then I had a horrible thought. Was I sure the original email was from Facebook? I went back and re-read it, and the "Facebook" link actually passed through an intermediary site first. I called my bank to check my credit cards. I forwarded the email to my text-only UNIX mail reader...

Like I said, I finally determined that the email had been legitimate - but it was a pretty miserable experience.