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."

Comments

If this is a shock to you.

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a moron and just the sort facebook loves.

Users misunderstood what Facebook's 2FA stood for

[JoeyRox]

It's short for We don't give "two fucks, asshole".

Duh

[DogDude]

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?

Re:Duh

[lokedhs]

It's highly likely that they already have your phone number. Most Facebook users happily share their address book with them, and as long as any of them has your phone number, they will trivially link it to you.

Re:Duh

[Anonymous Coward]

It's highly likely that they already have your phone number.

Exactly. You can have no direct involvement with FB but people who do will give data about you to FB. The chance they don't have your phone number is roughly zero.

Not only that but for most people they also have your facial biometrics, because you will at some point be in a photo that someone uploads to FB (unless you haven't left your basement in the last 10 years). You don't even have to be tagged for them to work out who you are.

In fact, recently, your face doesn't even have to be visible for them to figure it out. They are developing ways to recognize people in photographs from other cues, like posture, body shape and size, and so on.

Facebook Can Now Identify You in Pictures Even Without Your Face Showing "...even when you hide your face, you can be successfully linked to your identity..."

Re:Duh

[MobyDisk]

Back in 2000, when the "i love you" trojan was harvesting people's address books, everyone was up in arms. Microsoft's reputation for security was damaged for a decade, IT managers had to start educating people about trojans and spear-phishing. Today, everyone expects that software harvests their personal information without asking and doesn't seem to care. How far we have fallen.

Re:Duh

[jcr]

Microsoft's reputation for security was damaged for a decade

I have to take exception to that. Microsoft never had any reputation for security in the first place.

-jcr

This is why [Re:If this is a shock to you.]

[XXongo]

Yes, this is EXACTLY why I never gave FB my phone number for TFA despite how many times they tell me how secure it will make me.

They already know it, of course-- they hoover up information from everywhere. But they can't officially admit that they know it.

Re:Users misunderstood what Facebook's 2FA stood f

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Duh -- blame your friends

[blahbooboo]

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.

Quit

[Moof123]

Seriously, if you barely sign on anyway, just quit.

Re:Quit

[Solandri]

Will quitting make them forget your phone number?

The only winning move is not to play.

Re:Quit

[Bender Unit 22]

You can check out any time you want, but you can never leave.

Re:Quit

[Calydor]

If all of my friends, many of whom I consider smart and reasonable people, suddenly and inexplicably decided to jump off a bridge all at once, I would quickly reach the conclusion they knew something I did not and that jumping off the bridge was deemed safer than staying on it.

So yes.

begging

[fluffernutter]

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.

The original user is an idiot

[Etcetera]

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)

More likely reasons for 2FA:

[VeryFluffyBunny]

Let's try to come up with more likely explanations as to why Facebook, Google, et al. want our phone numbers so badly:

• + If they have your phone number they can identify your phone and track you more accurately (They also buy this data from the telcos)
• + They can also tie your account to your bank account (that you use to pay your phone bill) and tie that to your data that they bought from credit card companies.
• + Erm... what more can we come up with?

Re:More likely reasons for 2FA:

[FormOfActionBanana]

Correlate you with all the prostitutes and drug dealers who saved your phone number on their phones.

Re:More likely reasons for 2FA:

[viperidaenz]

If you have an Android phone with Google Play, Google already know your phone number.
If you have a Facebook app installed, Facebook already know it too.

Re:More likely reasons for 2FA:

[tlhIngan]

Is that so? I don't think GSM phones (with SIM) can see their own phone number, similar to how you can't see your IP address when you're behind a NAT.

My (EU, SIM) Android phone, in settings / about phone / status shows "phone number: unknown".

Yes they can. It's a basic command to the modem, actually. Most phones will retrieve and show the local phone number as a convenience (because there are people who do not know their own phone number - after all, how often are you calling yourself?).

Every phone I've had, from the lowliest Nokia dumbphone back in the days to modern smartphones show your phone number. Heck, I remember it documented in the manual because well, you forget.

If you want to know, the command is "AT+CNUM" to get the local subscriber number. It is optional, and it depends on the SIM. Optional in the modem does not have to support the command (it may just return OK), and depends on the SIM to have your number programmed into the phonebook (normally done during activation). Sometimes during SIM activation the phone number isn't programmed in by the operator in which case it too will return just OK. Otherwise you get +CNUM="+phonenumber"\r\nOK\r\n

Re:More likely reasons for 2FA:

[jawtheshark]

Well, the answer is thus: SIM cards know their number when it's programmed into the SIM. By default they do not know their number.

I thought they knew by default and I found out "the hard way" that it isn't so. I bought a cheap pre-paid card to use in one of my UMTS modems. Interestingly I did not get the number when buying the SIM. I suspect it was written on the receipt, which I threw away when I bought it. Given I had trouble sending SMS using smstools, I wanted to try sending SMS to it, and when I realized I didn't have the number, I tried the above CNUM command. Obviously it didn't work, then I stuck it in my iPhone (big mistake: it messes with your iMessage configuration if you switch SIMs!) and the iPhone said "unknown". At least now I could call someone and get the number. I then set it into the "My Phone Number" feature and now the CNUM also works. (Interestingly, for the SMS problem it was SMSC that wasn't set correctly. How the eff that is possible, I don't understand. That's really something that should be preset. Finding the SMS Centre for the provider was not easy either)

Lessons learned: SIMs do not know their numbers by default and ask the damned phone number when you buy a new SIM.

You're probably getting tired of hearing it but..

[Narcocide]

I told you so.

Re:The day

[ColdWetDog]

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.

Well if that's the case can we at least get some CD-ROMs? They were marginally useful.

Re:SPAM away Facebook--the more, the better

[viperidaenz]

Don't worry, they probably already have a shadow profile of you.

Re:Users misunderstood what Facebook's 2FA stood f

[AHuxley]

The A is for ads.

Full stop

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

"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.

Re:WTF is 'perviserating'

[mukinrestak]

When we have no idea what word you meant to use, that's YOUR fault, not AC's.

trickery

[Tom]

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.

Re:WTF is 'perviserating'

[Calydor]

Not that 'perseverating' is in my vocabulary either, but here's a screengrab of my Google search for 'perviserating'. Can you point out where it corrects the word?

https://imgur.com/a/zXQKF

Please do keep calling me a liar just because Google reacts differently in different countries.

This is what the GDPR is about

[Alain Williams]

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.

Re: SPAM away Facebook--the more, the better

[infolation]

"Hammer" would be the opposite of spammer, right?

Break it down.... STOP!




Spammertime.

Not so fast...

[chill]

(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).