[_cs2017_]

Seems like this information came from Quora: https://www.quora.com/Is-1-844-457-1420-really-Facebook-supp.... Screenshot: https://postimg.cc/gallery/2nFq5Cm.

I suspect the helpful SEO guy who posted this answer was trying to get more visibility on Quora so answered many questions automatically or semi-automatically without verifying anything.

This is the beginning of the post:

  Ruhul Alom
  Social Media Marketer at Social MediaAuthor has 2.9K answers and 1M answer views6mo
  My dear !
  Yes, 1-844-457-1420 is a valid Facebook support phone number. It is a toll-free number that is available 24/7. You can call this number to get help with a variety of Facebook issues, such as:

  Resetting your password
  Logging in to your account
  Recovering a hacked account
  [...]

[ceejayoz]

The "helpful SEO guy" likely is (or was hired by) the scammer.

StackOverflow gets lots of fake posts like this promoting numbers. Around tax time there's a lot of Quicken ones.

[dylan604]

See, this is what confuses me to know end. Not once, ever, have I thought of asking an online forum for a phone number. Maybe I'm paranoid enough after all??? Also, I'm old, so I actually visit companies webpages. We've been through enough "don't fall for phishing" enough now, right? You don't trust links, phone numbers, whatever from anything that is not the official places for that information.

[ceejayoz]

Facebook doesn't provide phone support, and people get desperate. People then Google things like "Facebook support phone".

All you'll find is results like https://gethuman.com/phone-number/Facebook or https://facebook-pay.pissedconsumer.com/customer-service.htm... or the Quora post that all have numbers that almost certainly goes to a scammer.

Bonus points when it makes it into the AI models (as happened here) where they repeat it verbatim as if it were the truth.

[dylan604]

again, even if I were the one doing that Google search, with the domain examples you provided, I wouldn't trust one of them.

Like, common sense on the interwebs just continues to disappear. Gullibility seems to have increased as critical thinking and coming to logical conclusions are disappearing.

[ceejayoz]

In this case, it was Meta's own AI regurgitating something it found on Quora. Quite a few people would trust that, especially non-technical folks.

[dylan604]

Yes, that is the point of the TFA, but I was commenting on what data was posted online well before the AI was "born". I'm guessing that Meta can fix it with a prompt that tells the system it is not allowed to verify FB phone numbers or there are NO phone numbers for the public to use to contact FB but do not inform the user that there are not phone numbers. Only deny any phone number is a valid phone number for FB (or Meta).

[jfengel]

I see a ton of this on Quora. Not just for Facebook, but for a lot of online banks and others. They have hundreds of accounts doing it.

Quora doesn't even pretend to police this kind of thing. Automated moderation might remove it, only after it has been reported. There's far, far too much of it for users to report all of it.

Nobody pays attention to it on Quora, but it's clear that it's out there to poison AI and search engines.

[guluarte]

I doubt they even care https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aquora.com+valid+Faceb...

[JohnMakin]

Bit tangential, but what the heck is it with scammers saying "dear" so much? Pretty much every pig butchering or social engineering attempt has had them repeatedly addressing me as "dear."

[throwaway48476]

It fell out of fashion in western English speaking countries decades ago but not the 3rd world English speaking countries the scammers come from.

[lxgr]

Many companies outsource their customer support staff as well.

That, and the fact that LLMs are now available to pretty much anyone for effectively nothing, would make me very cautious in basing my judgement of something being a scam or not exclusively on a caller's accent, spelling, mannerisms etc.

Lately, it's actually been quite the opposite in my experience, and I don't find that too surprising either: A lucrative scam business can afford to pay much more than the average US company that sees customer support as a cost center to be optimized at any cost. So why wouldn't their staff's English be better?

Social engineering scams are about to become a lot more exciting (in a bad way), not least thanks to LLMs (with and without voice capability), and I think people are absolutely not ready for it, not even us professionals working in tech.

[ghaff]

As well as the instantly recognizable obsequious politeness.

[djeastm]

In learning English as a second language, I suspect the textbooks tell them to start all correspondence with "Dear" so as to not appear impolite

[IAmNotACellist]

Ma'am just do one thing for me, go take a coffee or a glass of water and I will take care of each and everything.