Facebook's Fakery Problem: 83 Million Phony Accounts

Several years ago, I created a Facebook profile for my friend's cat. The same friend created a profile for a bizarro evil version of me.

College kids putting inside jokes on the Internet?no surprise there. And you've probably heard of or come across fake Facebook profiles based on fictional characters or historical figures. But what's funny to Facebook users could turn out to be a headache for Facebook.

The Social Network announced today that 8.7% of its 955 million active accounts are phony. That's about 83 million accounts, if you're scoring at home. Most of them (4.8% of all profiles) are second accounts belonging to people who already have a primary Facebook account. "User-misclassified accounts amounted to 2.4%?including personal profiles for businesses or pets," the BBC says. And 1.5% of all Facebook accounts are what the company ominously describes as "undesirable," those being nefarious accounts that flout Facebook's rules or spam other users.

The fact that Facebook has 872 million users rather than 955 million doesn't sound like such a big deal until you consider Facebook's money woes dating back its initial public offering in May and deflating performance since then. And the company's admission of millions of fake accounts wasn't its only bad news this week. Reports also surfaced that those Facebook bots are wreaking havoc on the site's ad-supported business. A company called Limited Pressing says that its investigation found 80 percent of clicks on Facebook ads came from spambots.

Don't feel too bad, Facebook. Twitter is glutted with spam, too.

Source: http://www.popularmechanics.com/how-to/blog/facebooks-fakery-problem-83-million-phony-accounts-11284782?src=rss

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