Facebook operates a bug bounty program in which it pays ethical hackers up to $US 500 for quietly disclosing vulnerabilities. According to reports of Mangham's court appearances, the software development student claimed to have been an ethical hacker who had previously breached Yahoo's system as a service to that company. "It was to identify vulnerabilities in the system so I could compile a report that I could then bundle over to Facebook and show them what was wrong with their system," Mangham told Southwark Crown Court. The judge decided that this was not Mangham's intention at the time.

"You accessed the very heart of the system of an international business of massive size, so this was not just fiddling about in the business records of some tiny business of no great importance," the judge continued, noting that Mangham had at least risked "putting in danger the reputation of an innocent employee of Facebook".