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Facebook Is Spamming Users Via Their 2FA Phone Numbers (mashable.com)
According to Mashable, Facebook account holder Gabriel Lewis tweeted that Facebook texted "spam" to the phone number he submitted for the purposes of 2-factor authentication. Lewis insists that he did not have mobile notifications turned on, and when he replied "stop" and "DO NOT TEXT ME," he says those messages showed up on his Facebook wall. From the report: Lewis explained his version of the story to Mashable via Twitter direct message. "[Recently] I decided to sign up for 2FA on all of my accounts including FaceBook, shortly afterwards they started sending me notifications from the same phone number. I never signed up for it and I don't even have the FB app on my phone." Lewis further explained that he can go "for months" without signing into Facebook, which suggests the possibility that Mark Zuckerberg's creation was feeling a little neglected and trying to get him back. According to Lewis, he signed up for 2FA on Dec. 17 and the alleged spamming began on Jan. 5. Importantly, Lewis isn't the only person who claims this happened to him. One Facebook user says he accidentally told "friends and family to go [to] hell" when he "replied to the spam."
You are a moron and just the sort facebook loves.
It's short for We don't give "two fucks, asshole".
Am I not surprised?
May the hammer drop soon on Facebook, I chortle gleefully since I'm not on FB.
What kind of idiot would give their phone number to Facebook? Seriously... who would do this? Facebook is a company that makes money from selling your personal information to anybody who'll pay them. What kind of person thinks that giving a company like this a phone number is a good idea?
I don't respond to AC's.
They already know it, of course-- they hoover up information from everywhere. But they can't officially admit that they know it.
As someone who is very good with password hygiene and also uses a VPN, I've basically had 2FA forced down my throat. I am definitely suspicious that this was just a way to track me more easily under the guise of security.
Lowlife scumbags do scummy lowlife things. News at 10.
Unfortunately people give permission to Facebook to "look for friends" by sharing their address book (Linked In does this as well). If you're in the address book, guess what? LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, etc now have a complete list of all your information thanks to your friends.
This is how you get the "magical" friend/contact suggestions in these services.
Seriously, if you barely sign on anyway, just quit.
No one is surprised that Facebook and its ilk are slime is the day we can claim victory. At this point we are all just fodder for their ultimately fruitless Frankenstein 'AI' experiments. They understand nothing. Welcome to AOL 2.0, and I have no doubt they will meet the same fate. Suck it, AI dweebs.
I have never given Facebook my phone number, nor have I ever installed the app. Somehow they are texting me and BEGGING me to come back. It's kind of funny.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
1. If you have ANYTHING to do with facebook, you are a fool. Full stop. It's time to wake up and realize WTF that thing is.
2. There are a metric fuckton of companies I don't want to have my email, phone number, or biometrics. Any 2FA that wants things like that is a non-starter.
YES! Facebook, Google and the other big tech platforms make a living out of sellig your privacy, so giving them your phone number as well is crazy!
BTW did you know iPhone apps can see your iPhone name so if you've named your phone after you and your home phone number the have that too.
BTW did you know when you install an Android App even if free that Google send your e-mail to the App developer so they can spam and resell it and without warning you first.
I can virtually guarantee that he was confused and enabled his mobile number as "the" mobile number on his Facebook account when setting up 2FA. (In fact, I'd be surprised if Facebook allowed a distinct 2FA number that hadn't already be validated as belonging to you to be set.)
As for why it showed up on his wall, maybe if he used Facebook more he'd realize that that's a feature. Send an SMS to the 5 digit SMS code and it will be interpreted as a FB Status update (unless it matches another string, like poking a user using a distinct notification number).
It's rarely used nowadays because a majority of folks probably use the app, but if you want to update via text message that's how you do it.
Ticket closed: PEBCAK (and stop whining)
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
It's called Facebook.com , and if you go on it you'll see ads and manipulated and censored news items. Oh, and advertisers and the government will spy on you.
This is the main reason why I did not give Facebook a 2FA phone number the dozens of times I was prompted to do so. If Facebook wanted it that badly, I suspected it was not for my own benefit (i.e., I was the product being sold) It just seemed to me that they would either spam me directly or sell the number to advertisers or both.
I have altered the deal. Pray I do not alter it further.
Let's try to come up with more likely explanations as to why Facebook, Google, et al. want our phone numbers so badly:
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
I told you so.
and their thinly veiled phone number harvesting operations. i'm looking at you, google.
The A is for ads.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
How exactly have you had it âoeforced down your throatâ? Facebook *does* ask me to sign up for it now and then, but has never made it a requirement. And whatâ(TM)s with all this perviserating from people who would never / donâ(TM)t use FB to begin with?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
"Facebook Is Spamming Users..."
That's all I needed to read, everything beyond that is just detail.
Of course Facebook Is spamming you, THAT'S WHAT THEY DO.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
And what the fuck do you mean by 'perviserating' ??/.
And Zuck is a clingy bitch for asking.
2-Facebook-Ads (2FA) per day, this feature sounds just correct and functions as per the specs.
Possible user errors aside, why would you ever willingly give your phone number or any other personal details not strictly necessary to a company in the business of selling your personal data ???
It should be obvious to an idiot that for FB, 2FA is just a welcome excuse to get you to give up your phone number, which of course they will immediately turn around and sell.
Honestly, you have to be stupid not to spot that.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
As with any data in any industry, accurate data is valuable.
The up coming General Data Protection Regulation says, amongst many other things, that data must only be used for the purpose that it is obtained and can only be used with the explicit permission of the individual. Hopefully scum-bags like facebook will change once they have had a few fines of 2% of the annual worldwide turnover.
Well it serves you right to give Facebook anything because they are like vultures these days with your information. Unfortunately Facebook is desperate to show numbers to keep its ad sales up and with so many leaving that's getting harder. Its why I refuse to have Messenger or any thing related to Facebook on my phone. Facebook is relentless in sucking info from its users.
The title makes it sound like a widespread problem, but it looks like this has only happened to a single person. Honestly, seems like some idiot user accidentally turned on a notification feature and then was upset when it did what he told it to do. Just because he wasn't aware of what he did or how he could easily stop it doesn't really make it a scandal.
Violations such as these should be met with immediate and brutal consequences both financial *and physical* on all those even indirectly remotely responsible up at the top.
Facebook will pull out the usual set of bullshit boilerplates of how "something went wrong with the process", "we are taking this very seriously" or "we will internally investigate these allegations" and so on, but the fact is every step of this was deliberate, calculated and authorized from up above.
People can either make sure these abuses are finally made to cost such sociopaths an arm and a leg, or we can all just rub our collective asses and hope next time (and they're already working on next time) they'll feel like using lube.
I had something similar recently. I had deactivated my account on FB several weeks before. When I woke up one morning, I see an SMS message had arrived overnight saying " posted an update" and it was just a perfect ordinary post by that friend.
I don't have 2FA, they only have my phone number by virtue of supplying it through the phone app previously.
I received several SMS messages like this, from half-a-dozen numbers, a week or two ago. There were maybe 20 messages over a 1 hour period.
Here's the thing. I don't have a Facebook account. I did, once, about 10 years ago. I cancelled it after only about a month, and that was long before they implemented 2FA. And it was also long before I had my current phone number. This number has never been given to Facebook for anything, at least not by me.
I thought they were a scam of some sort, and just ended up blocking the numbers as spam in my messaging client (Signal).
(Logging in to repeat my anonymous post)
I received several SMS messages like this, from half-a-dozen numbers, a week or two ago. There were maybe 20 messages over a 1 hour period.
Here's the thing. I don't have a Facebook account. I did, once, about 10 years ago. I cancelled it after only about a month, and that was long before they implemented 2FA. And it was also long before I had my current phone number. This number has never been given to Facebook for anything, at least not by me.
I thought they were a scam of some sort, and just ended up blocking the numbers as spam in my messaging client (Signal).
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
I'm just saying I don't want my tax dollars squandered defending toxic parasites like facebook from the honest repercussions of their predatory crimes.
Perhaps, you should just Unfriend Facebook.
Am I reading that right. Sending a text to Facebook will show the post on their page?
It's pretty easy to spoof where an SMS came from. This could be fun.
I, too, refused to ever provide FB with my phone number - even though it prompts regularly to add it.
I'm finding that increasingly, "free" services online that ask for your cell number DO use the info for marketing purposes.
For example? I know many people who noticed that right after they started playing that HQ Trivia game on their phones, they started receiving a lot of scam and solicitation calls on their number. I definitely did.