83 Million fake Facebook Accounts reported

Facebook has more than 83 million fake facebook profile. The figure emerged in Facebook’s first quarterly report to US financial regulators since the world’s biggest social network made its much-criticised stock market debut in May.

There were 83.09 million fake users in total, which Facebook classifies into three groups. The largest is made up of almost 46 million duplicate profiles, accounting for 4.8% of all accounts. The company defined that category as “an account that a user maintains in addition to his or her principal account”.

What were deemed “user-misclassified” profiles amounted to 2.4%, almost 23 million, where Facebook says “users have created personal profiles for a business, organisation or non-human entity such as a pet”.

Finally, “undesirable” profiles accounted for the remainder, about 14 million, which are deemed to be in breach of Facebook’s terms and conditions. The company said this typically means accounts that have been set up to send spam messages or content to other Facebook users.

In March, when Facebook last gave an estimate of the number of fake or duplicate accounts, it said the proportion was in the region of 5% or 6%, which at the time meant between 42 million and 50 million.

Company stated in a filling:
“We are continually seeking to improve our ability to identify duplicate or false or fake facebook accounts and estimate the total number of such accounts, and such estimates may be affected by improvements or changes in our methodology,”. Facebook estimates that duplicate or false accounts are lower in developed markets like the United States or Australia, and higher in developing markets that include Indonesia and Turkey.

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