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| Meta expels employees who have taken over or hacked Facebook user accounts |
The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Meta has fired or fined 20 employees or contractors who hacked or took over Facebook user accounts.
The newspaper stated that some employees and contractors were involved in paying bribes, quoting people familiar with the matter and documents. The dismissals and penalties are the result of an internal investigation by Meta, the parent company of social network Facebook, photo and video sharing service Instagram, instant messaging service WhatsApp and other services.
The report found that users who are banned from their Facebook accounts often do not do so in the traditional way, such as using a Facebook account. B. By directly communicating with Facebook, their account can be accessed again. As a result, some users turn to Meta to find third-party sources willing to open accounts for them.
In some cases, company employees have accepted thousands of dollars in bribes from hackers to gain control of or access user accounts, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
“People selling fraudulent services regularly target online platforms, including ours, and adapt their tactics to match industry standard detection methods,” Andy Stone, Meta's director of communications, told CNBC.
According to the report, some of the laid-off employees were contractors with Allied Universal, which provides meta-installation, and were hired to use internal tools to assist the company's employees.
The tools, called Oops, short for Online Operations, were originally intended for internal use and special cases, the magazine said.
According to the report, one of the functions of the Oops tool is to allow employees to return access to their account to any user.
"No one should buy or sell accounts or pay for account recovery services because it would be against our terms," Stone said. "We regularly update our security measures to deal with this type of activity and will continue to take appropriate action against those involved in such systems," he added.