How Do I Call Facebook Customer Service

Imagine that one day you're kicked off Facebook. It happens, regularly. You may not know why exactly. It looks like an algorithm may have done it — and now yous need to reach a human being at the company to get dorsum on. NPR has interviewed more than 2 dozen users in that situation — all people who rely on Facebook to practice their work, make their living.

Their stories, which we'll share in a split up commodity, made u.s. wonder: If you needed to achieve Facebook, what would you do?

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

Nosotros tried that, and got this number: 844-735-4595. It was prominently displayed every bit the meridian search consequence on Google. Google even made it a "featured snippet" — that is, a event highlighted in a box at the top, enhanced to describe user attention and lend credibility.

Until recently, a phone number at the top of Google search for "Facebook customer service" led callers to a scam, NPR has institute. Google/Screenshot past NPR hibernate caption

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Google/Screenshot by NPR

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

Google/Screenshot by NPR

Please do not call it. You will become someone real — just not from Facebook.

The get-go time NPR called, someone picked up so put the telephone downwardly — maybe on a tabular array. You 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 bearding for his work, chosen upwardly and recorded equally he pretended to be a Facebook user in distress.

A Pindrop Researcher Calls A Simulated Facebook Customer Service Number

A call centre operator named "Steven" — who, according 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: Become to a Wal-Mart or a Target.

"Only walk up over at that place and tell them to provide y'all an iTunes bill of fare. OK? And on the behind of that iTunes card there would exist a 16-digit security lawmaking."

Perhaps yous see where this is going.

Steven continues: "You lot need to call us back on this same number and provide me that sixteen-digit security code then that I can activate that access and we'll exist giving yous the password for your new — for your erstwhile account."

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

That toll-gratuitous "Facebook" line was not only 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 case, a user asked whether the number was valid and a member of the company's Help Team responded: "At that place isn't a number to contact Facebook. ... It sounds like the email or notification you saw is probable a scam." It's unclear whether the Help Team member reported it 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 advertizing, long before the rest of the world realized the company would dominate the Internet economy. "This is an astonishing event."

He also wrote a volume on how to dispense search results, to become your make or product upward on top. He knows that companies monitor their search results, to encounter 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'south not like somebody'due south searching for 'Hey, what colour are Mark Zuckerberg'due south socks?' It'due south not like it's something that's off the browbeaten path," Weintraub says. "Then one would call back that a company as big as 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, nearly 27,000 times a calendar month in the U.Due south.

Weintraub says that is sizable, that Facebook should accept known well-nigh it "about the first minute" information technology came upwards, 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 about the scam line.

Facebook said that it has been investigating the grouping associated with this toll-complimentary number for some fourth dimension; that this group is targeting many platforms; and that it'south up to Google to explicate why it displays certain 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 issue went unnoticed.

And to be clear, Facebook does non accept a phone number for regular users to call. It does have an online aid center, located here. (Facebook pays NPR and other leading news organizations to produce live video streams.)

NPR's Aarti Shahani has started a page on Facebook for people to share concerns about the platform. It's called Tell Zuck. If you use Facebook for piece of work, and notice y'all're unable to reach the company, tell her your story at www.facebook.com/tellzuck .