Is There Any Way To Email Facebook Customer Service To Leave A Message?

Imagine that i day yous're kicked off Facebook. It happens, regularly. You may non know why exactly. Information technology looks like an algorithm may have washed information technology — and now you demand to achieve a human being being at the visitor to get back on. NPR has interviewed more than ii dozen users in that state of affairs — all people who rely on Facebook to exercise their piece of work, make their living.

Their stories, which we'll share in a separate article, made us wonder: If you needed to accomplish Facebook, what would you do?

Many people would go online and search for "Facebook customer service."

We tried that, and got this number: 844-735-4595. It was prominently displayed as the peak search result on Google. Google even made information technology a "featured snippet" — that is, a outcome highlighted in a box at the superlative, enhanced to draw user attention and lend credibility.

Until recently, a phone number at the meridian of Google search for "Facebook customer service" led callers to a scam, NPR has found. Google/Screenshot by NPR hide caption

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Google/Screenshot by NPR

Until recently, a phone number at the acme of Google search for "Facebook customer service" led callers to a scam, NPR has found.

Google/Screenshot by NPR

Delight do not phone call it. Yous will get someone real — simply non from Facebook.

The first time NPR called, someone picked upward and then put the phone down — peradventure on a table. Yous could hear mumbling in the room. It felt suspicious.

So NPR gave the number to Pindrop, a company that specializes in phone fraud. A Pindrop researcher, who has to remain anonymous for his work, chosen up and recorded as he pretended to exist a Facebook user in distress.

A Pindrop Researcher Calls A False Facebook Customer Service Number

A call centre operator named "Steven" — who, co-ordinate to Pindrop analysis, is based in India — says: "Thanks for calling Facebook." He is pretending to exist a Facebook employee.

The Pindrop researcher plays along and explains he is locked out of his Facebook account. He needs help getting reactivated.

"Steven" gives him very unusual advice: Go to a Wal-Mart or a Target.

"Just walk upwardly over there and tell them to provide you an iTunes bill of fare. OK? And on the behind of that iTunes card there would be a 16-digit security code."

Peradventure you see where this is going.

Steven continues: "You need to call us back on this same number and provide me that xvi-digit security code and so that I can activate that admission and nosotros'll exist giving you the countersign for your new — for your old account."

This is a scam. The top Google search result for "Facebook customer service" led to a person asking for codes on iTunes gift cards. This is a well-known method of stealing from innocent people online. (Both Apple tree and the Federal Trade Commission have issued alerts about it.)

That toll-free "Facebook" line was non just on Google. That number and others have been circulating on Facebook itself, on pages where users are asking for help, for at least a year. In one example, a user asked whether the number was valid and a fellow member of the company's Help Team responded: "There isn't a number to contact Facebook. ... It sounds like the email or notification y'all saw is likely a scam." It'due south unclear whether the Help Team fellow member reported information technology to her superiors to investigate.

"Wow. Wow. Wow. That's crazy," says Marty Weintraub, founder of Aimclear Marketing. He wrote a leading industry book on Facebook advertizement, long earlier the balance of the earth realized the company would dominate the Internet economy. "This is an astonishing result."

He also wrote a book on how to manipulate search results, to get your make or product upwardly on meridian. He knows that companies monitor their search results, to see what their customers want, and that criminals and competitors try to exploit powerful brands. These are standard practices.

What Weintraub finds astonishing is that a term as basic as "Facebook customer service" slipped through the cracks.

"It's not like somebody's searching for 'Hey, what color are Marker Zuckerberg's socks?' Information technology'southward not similar it's something that'due south off the beaten path," Weintraub says. "So 1 would remember that a company equally large equally Facebook would be monitoring [the] search engine results page for a major query surrounding their services."

According to Google data, "Facebook customer service" gets searched, on average, nigh 27,000 times a month in the U.Southward.

Weintraub says that is sizable, that Facebook should have known about it "nearly the first minute" information technology came up, and that the company should have guarded its users. "I'd be and then scared," he says. "These are people who are looking for help with the production and they're getting scammed. OMG."

NPR informed Facebook and Google virtually the scam line.

Facebook said that it has been investigating the group associated with this toll-free number for some time; that this group is targeting many platforms; and that it's upwards to Google to explain why it displays sure search results.

A Google spokesperson said in a statement that the company has taken steps to remove the fraudulent number.

Neither visitor explained how the prominent search event went unnoticed.

And to be clear, Facebook does not have a phone number for regular users to call. It does have an online help centre, located here. (Facebook pays NPR and other leading news organizations to produce live video streams.)

NPR'due south Aarti Shahani has started a page on Facebook for people to share concerns virtually the platform. It's called Tell Zuck. If you lot use Facebook for work, and find you're unable to reach the visitor, tell her your story at www.facebook.com/tellzuck .