Facebook Has 83 Million "Fake" Users
Duplicate, misclassified, and "undesirable" accounts make up nearly 9 percent of site's users.
| Posted Thursday, Aug. 2, 2012, at 11:20 AM
Photo by Kimihiro Hoshino/AFP/Getty Images
Nearly 9 percent of Facebook’s 955 million active users may be "fakes," significantly higher than estimates released earlier this year, the social media site revealed in a filing this week.
The final tally? More than 83 million profiles are likely not the primary accounts of real people—a total equivalent to the population of Egypt, Mashable notes.
Fake profiles fall into one of three categories. The largest portion, 4.8 percent of all users, are duplicate profiles. Some 2.4 percent are user-misclassified accounts like personal accounts for a business, or that profile kept for your friend’s dog. The remaining fakes are classified as "undesirable," mainly malicious accounts used for spamming.
In March, Facebook estimated that that between 5 and 6 percent of user profiles were fake. On a daily basis, some 600,000 accounts are compromised, and 20,000 are banned by the company. The high numbers of fakes may have some implications for Facebook’s advertisers, the BBC muses, noting that the company relies on income from user-targeted advertising.
