I recently read a few articles that touted Facebook as a good networking tool and with nothing to lose except my dignity, I tried to sign up for an account. I say “tried” because apparently they don’t accept anything starting with info@ as a valid e-mail address. This is a problem because that’s the only address that I use on public sites and any others you might see for me actually get forwarded to that account.

I’ve only encountered this once before and that was when I tried to change my Borders rewards registration address from an old one that was getting too much spam. In both cases, I contacted support and the guy I got at Borders seemed just as bewildered as I was, but eventually he had to ask someone who simple told him that the address wasn’t allowed. No reason was given in either case, but I have the feeling this is a lazy attempt to prevent spam on their end at the expense of usability.

I thought about simply boycotting both places, but realized that would probably only hurt me in the long run. So I created special aliases for both place that forward to my info@ e-mail address:

• facebookisretarded@
• bordersisretarded@

Surprisingly, both sites allowed me to register with those addresses.