‘Tis the season to have problems with Facebook, it seems.

A couple of days ago, a friend ran into trouble because she’d lost admin access to her business’s FB page. She was selling the business, including the page, but the new owners never received their login emails, and she had no way to get back in and resend because she’d revoked her own privileges. I solved this, after some fiddling, by discovering that the “owner” of the page was not her personal FB account but a business account under the same name, hidden in an obscure place. Once I got that reconnected, everything was sorted and she was able to transfer ownership. Win!

Then today I heard from a new client who had a very similar problem. She had Two Factor Authentication (2FA) on her business FB page, using her phone to authenticate, but her phone had suffered a mishap of the sort that no mere bowl of rice could undo. This time, the clue was in the message her computer was giving: “Facebook will ask for identification when accessed on a new device or browser”. Turns out she was still logged in to her old FB account, with all the business access, in a different web browser. I got in and reset the 2FA, and now she has everything she needs.

What does this tell us? Two things.

First, Facebook makes this sort of thing incredibly complicated, which is a serious problem given how much we all rely on it:

• Multiple accounts of different types, attached to different menus that all look 90% identical.
• “Security” that mainly exists to reassure you that you’re safe, without ever providing anything that anyone could call real safety.
• And “help” that quite simply doesn’t exist: big companies like Facebook, Google, Apple and Microsoft save money by just not employing support staff.

This is all pretty bad.

But second, all of the above can be dealt with if you don’t give up. It may take some serious detective work, and it definitely helps to have all your computers and other devices in one spot in case we have to rummage around for that one bit of information that will answer all our questions. But it can be done!

My advice, which probably sounds a bit self-serving but I think I can justify it: if you have trouble, give Huon Computer Solutions a call. Fixing this sort of nonsense is What I Do. Maybe I can fix it for you too.

Nobody likes cheques, right?  Irritating to write out, dreadful to deal with, and there’s got to be a better way.  But credit card facilities are expensive, and nowadays nobody carries cash for fear it will be covered in evil germs.  So what to do?  How do you send and receive money without the delays of cheques and the fiddly inconvenience of cash?

Enter PayID.  It’s a way to send money from your bank account to someone else’s, or to receive it from someone else’s bank account to yours.  It’s simple to set up, simple to use and very fast in operation.  A typical transfer using PayID only takes a couple of minutes to go through, which is better than direct deposit payments while also being much simpler.

To use it to send money, you need a bank account, obviously, and also the ability to access your bank account on your phone, tablet or computer.  So, your banking app, in other words.  Here are the instructions for the five main Australian banks:

• Sending money using PayID with a Commonwealth Bank account
• Sending money using PayID with a Westpac Bank account
• Sending money using PayID with an ANZ Bank account
• Sending money using PayID with a National Australia Bank account
• Sending money using PayID with a Bendigo Bank account (scroll to the bottom of the page)

To receive money is even easier, once you get yourself set up.  To do that you can call or visit your bank and let them do it for you, or follow these instructions yourself:

• Setting up PayID to receive money with a Commonwealth Bank account
• Setting up PayID to receive money with a Westpac Bank account
• Setting up PayID to receive money with an ANZ Bank account
• Setting up PayID to receive money with a National Australia Bank account
• Setting up PayID to receive money with a Bendigo Bank account (scroll to the bottom of the page)

It’s pretty simple. Give it a go. Anything’s got to be better than cheques, right?