Report: Facebook Employees Fired for Taking Bribes to Access Accounts

Facebook has reportedly terminated or reprimanded more than two dozen employees and contractors over the last year for allegedly accepting bribes in return for improperly accessing user accounts.

The Wall Street Journal reports that according to sources and documents viewed by the WSJ, Facebook (now known as Meta) has terminated or disciplined more than two dozen employees and contractors in the last year for allegedly improperly accessing user accounts, sometimes accepting bribes to do so.

According to the documents viewed by the WSJ and people familiar with the matter, some of those fired were Facebook facilities’ security guards who were contracted to work as security guards and had access to Facebook’s parent’s internal mechanism for assisting users with accounts.

Employees have been helping Facebook users who have forgotten their passwords or emails since the early years of the company, through a process known internally as “Oops.” Employees at some of the firms were offered bribes by hackers to gain access to user accounts, according to Facebook. In some cases, those people accepted thousands of dollars in bribes, people and documents say.

“Individuals selling fraudulent services are always targeting online platforms, including ours, and adapting their tactics in response to the detection methods that are commonly used across the industry,” said Facebook spokesman Andy Stone who added that the company “will keep taking appropriate action against those involved in these kinds of schemes.”

A spokesperson for Allied Universal, Facebook’s security contractor, said that it “takes seriously all reports of violations of our standards of conduct.”

OOPs is an acronym for “Online Operations” which employees are told to only use in special cases for friends, family, business partners, and public figures. However, the use of this system has seen a surge as headcount has increased. According to an internal document reviewed by the WSJ, the channel serviced 50,270 tasks in 2020, up from 22,000 three years earlier.

Read more at the Wall Street Journal here.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan