Many Vietnamese users cannot access Facebook or Instagram because they do not receive OTP codes

Throughout the week, many Facebook and Instagram users in Vietnam have repeatedly reflected on their inability to access their accounts because they did not receive OTP authentication codes.

A Facebook user in Ho Chi Minh City shared that his Facebook account was required to change his password because of suspicious activity. But after changing the password, he did not receive the OTP authentication code and sent it to the phone number associated with the account.

Another Facebook user said he was locked out of his Facebook account a week ago and asked the social network to send OTP codes to his phone. After 10 minutes of not receiving a code from Facebook, this person requested to send it again while waiting. After 20 minutes, he received two codes but it was both unusable. He continued to send the request for the 3rd time but it was still not received after more than 1 day.

Taking advantage of the incident occurred with many people, some Facebook service providers accepted to unlock checkpoints with the cost from 500,000 to 2,000,000 VND.

According to a Facebook service in Ho Chi Minh City, users should wait patiently after sending a request for the first time, do not send the request too many times to avoid being counted as spam.

According to leaked information, this incident occurred stemming from commercial fraud by Facebook's SMS partner. When users send OTP requests, Facebook will receive and transfer content to SMS distribution partners to send to users as international messages.

In order to make a profit of VND 200-300 / message, many SMS distributors have used tricks to cheat international SMS charges to domestic market. When the fraud is detected, the network will block these messages.

1. Phone numbers of 419 million Facebook accounts have just been leaked, 50 million accounts of users in Vietnam are affected