It was a Thursday. I got home from work and wanted to upload photos I had been putting off for two days. Opened Facebook, typed the password, hit login. A little circle appeared, spun for seven or eight seconds, the page blinked, and I was back at the login form.
No error message. Not "wrong password." Nothing. As if I had never clicked. I tried again. Same. The third time I switched to mobile data, and it went straight through.
I thought my account was stolen
That was my first assumption. I changed the password. Still spinning. I tried an old laptop on the same home Wi-Fi. Still spinning. Phone on 4G: instant.
That was when I stopped suspecting the account and started suspecting the network. Specifically, the proxy exit I was using at home.
Spinning is not an error, it is hesitation
My reading of it: the platform sees the correct password, but it also sees an IP it does not like. It does not want to let me in, and it does not want to tell me why. So it hangs, times out, and drops me back on the login page.
That IP came from a cheap proxy provider, a datacenter range, probably used by a lot of people before me. The IP lookup showed a cloud company in the network field and a risk score that was not flattering. I looked at it and said "ah" out loud.
Dumb things I tried
Cleared cache, changed browsers, disabled every extension, reinstalled the app. None of it mattered. All of that changed my side, not the address their server saw.
Then I did something even dumber: clicked login a dozen times in a row. The account got a 24-hour lock. I spent that day staring at a screen I could not use.
Now I have a rule. Two failed logins, I stop. I check the environment instead of clicking harder. Clicking harder always makes it worse.
What actually fixed it
I moved to a clean residential node whose location matched where the account normally lives. The first login still spun for a few seconds, then went through. It asked me to confirm it was me, I tapped yes, and everything was normal after that.
For what it is worth, the proxy check flagged the old node as a proxy and did not flag the new one. The difference was visible on one screen.
Habits now
I do not switch nodes right before logging in. I do not switch three times in one day. Accounts have long memories. Being in Los Angeles today and Tokyo tomorrow will not get you banned immediately, but it will keep asking "is this you?"
I also stopped logging into important accounts on public Wi-Fi. The coffee shop network is convenient, but you have no idea who else is behind that exit.
I checked the old node again before writing this. Same risk score. Fine. Tuition.