Facebook parent company Meta has fired or punished more than 20 employees and contract workers over the past year, accusing them of improperly resetting user accounts through internal systems and, in some cases, accepting bribes, according to the Wall Street Journal, which cited people familiar with the matter.
According to internal documents and people familiar with the matter, users whose Facebook accounts were locked were often unable to log in directly to Facebook in traditional ways, so some users turned to employees or contractors working at Meta through intermediaries to help them unlock or reset their accounts using internal employee mechanisms. Internal documents show that in some cases, Meta employees received thousands of dollars in bribes.
This internal mechanism, known as “Oops” at Facebook, has been in place since Facebook’s inception and allows employees to help users restore access to their accounts.
Meta spokesman Andy Stone said, “People who sell fraudulent services always target online platforms like ours and adapt their tactics to the detection methods commonly used throughout the industry.” He added that Meta “will continue to take appropriate action against such individuals.”
A spokesperson for Meta’s security contractor, Allied Universal, also said the company “takes all reports of violations of our standards of conduct seriously.
The situation illustrates that Meta provides little customer service, despite having more than 3 billion users on its social platforms. The company has said it is committed to enhancing customer service in the coming years.
When users’ accounts are locked, they often try to reset them automatically or contact Meta employees by phone or email, but many report that this is often in vain. Some of them were able to reach a Meta employee or contract worker and fill out a request to restore account access through the Oops channel.
Oops is supposed to be fairly limited to special cases like unlocking accounts of friends, family, business partners, and public figures, but usage has been climbing in recent years as the number of Meta employees has grown. An internal document shows the Oops channel supporting about 50,270 tasks in 2020, up from 22,000 tasks three years ago.
If an Oops report is submitted, the Meta employee handling it will need to list an email address that was associated with a reset Facebook or Instagram account.
Internal documents show that they must also answer a series of questions, such as indicating what the user who wants to reset their account is from. This request is then sent to Meta’s community support team.
Because so many people rely on social media for business or to manage the content of their lives, illegally controlling user accounts can be lucrative. Some Facebook and Instagram accounts can even be sold for tens of thousands of dollars.
Because the vast majority of users don’t have access to the Oops system, an industry of intermediaries has developed who charge fees to help users regain control of their accounts, people familiar with the matter said. Some of these intermediaries claim they have access to internal Meta employees to help reset accounts.
“When you shut down someone’s Instagram account that they’ve spent years building, you’re taking away all of their revenue stream,” says Nick McCandless. He would charge customers a fee to reset their accounts, sometimes done through Meta’s contract workers.
He says, “You have to find someone internally who will actually do it.”
Brooke Millard, a model who lives in Orland County and has about 650,000 followers on her Instagram account, paid McKendox about $7,000 to restore her account after she was unable to access it in December 2021.
“It’s clear to me that he obviously didn’t do it,” she said. “There was obviously someone else behind him.”
Meta spokesman Stone said buying or selling accounts or paying to restore them violates the social network’s terms of service.
Meta is also investigating whether some former employees conspired with company employees to hijack users’ accounts. In July, a Meta lawyer sent a letter to Kendel Melbourne, a former security contractor who was fired in 2021, alleging that he helped “a third party take fraudulent control of Instagram accounts.
Meta asked Melbourne to provide a list of user accounts he tried to reset and the money he made by providing account reset services.
Meta accused Melbourne of violating the U.S. Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and banned him from using Facebook and Instagram.
Melbourne, who is affiliated with United Global, had login credentials for Facebook’s intranet, which included the ability to request user account resets through the company’s internal Oops system, according to internal documents and people familiar with the matter. In the interview, Melbourne described Oops as a perk of this outsourced job.
“They didn’t have any rules and they didn’t give you any classes,” Melbourne said.
Melbourne denied committing fraud, saying he only reset about 20 accounts on behalf of friends, family and people he trusted.
Another Meta contract worker at United Global, Reva Mandelowitz, was fired in February after an internal investigation found that she allegedly reset multiple user accounts and brokered thousands of dollars worth of bitcoin.
In an interview, Mandelowitz also denied any wrongdoing, saying she only reset about 20 accounts at the request of friends and family.
United Global recently began cracking down on employees’ use of Meta’s internal systems. An internal company message warned, “Do not use the Meta OOPS platform.”
