back to article Facebook: 83 million IMPOSTERS stalk our network

Facebook is still racking up false accounts even as it continues to try and flush out imposters on the dominant social network, which is seeing its value close to being halved on Wall Street. The Mark Zuckerberg-run company disclosed during its first public quarterly earnings report last week that it now has 955 million …

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  1. Lord Voldemortgage

    Duplicates

    I think I've got two Facebook accounts - I set one up in my real name when I needed to get in touch with someone who didn't really know how to use anything else but before that I started one in a made-up name to see what the site was like.

    Can't remember what it was though.

    I wonder how typical that is?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Duplicates

      I was so impressed I set up 7 accounts,

      Dopey, Bashful, Doc, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy and Sneezy.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Duplicates

      If everyone on Facebook set up 10 fake user accounts each Facebook would fail.

      This is of course only an observation.

    3. Michael Xion

      Re: Duplicates

      Set one up the other day just to access some info only available ona company's FB account. Oddly enough Nerk Nerksome has yet to find any friends -:)

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Duplicates are a massive problem and definitely account for a higher percentage than they are letting on. Accounts for pets is just the tip of the iceberg, but they won't want to let on as it will tank the share price even more.

    Accounts in celebrities names

    Accounts in pets names

    Accounts for cheating on partners

    Accounts for games so you can give your main account bonuses faster

    Accounts for businesses who don't like the standard pages facebook let you create

    Accounts for idiots who have locked themselves out of their original account

    I only use the site to keep in touch with family and friends who are far afield, but more and more obviously fake or duplicate accounts keep cropping up on people you may know. More than actual human accounts. It's a massive problem it's got to be in the 30 to 40% mark.

    Also I wonder how they classify 'closed accounts' because when you close it you can log in four months later and everything is there as if you never left it, so are they classing those accounts in their total user base?

    1. sebacoustic
      Holmes

      @AC 2012-08-02 12:31

      > More than actual human accounts. .. it's got to be in the 30 to 40% mark.

      So what else is there (other than "actual humans" and "fakes") if fakes are more than humans but less than 50%?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: @AC 2012-08-02 12:31

        > More than actual human accounts. .. it's got to be in the 30 to 40% mark.

        So what else is there (other than "actual humans" and "fakes") if fakes are more than humans but less than 50%?

        As I said it's more fake than actual human accounts on the people you may know part of facebookt. On people you may know it's about 80% fake accounts.

        As for the site in general and it's accounts I estimate it will be about 30/40%

    2. LaeMing
      Meh

      You forgot,

      accounts for stalking your ex-. (Though I think I have given him enough to read about why he is my ex- to send him away now.)

  3. The Man Who Fell To Earth Silver badge
    FAIL

    It's much worse than Facebook claims

    I used to have two Facebook accounts, one real and one fake. The Facebook nazi's decided my real one was fake, deactivated it, and demanded I authenticate it with documentation if I wanted it reactivated. My response was "screw you", and so if and when I ever "need" to log into Facebook, I use the fake account.

    A while back, in my workplace, we had a discussion of this and what was surprising was how many people, like me, had their real Facebook accounts flagged as fakes, and like me, chose to not provide Facebook with proof they were who they claimed they were, and instead just keep using their fake account.

    So despite Facebooks admission that almost 10% of Facebook accounts are fakes, the real percentage has got to be higher. Much higher.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: It's much worse than Facebook claims

      They didn't believe your surname was "Who Fell to Earth"? Always thought Facebook were weird

  4. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge

    Zuckerberg is no Bill Gates.

    1. Mike Flugennock
      Facepalm

      "Zuckerberg is no Bill Gates"

      ...and, is this a good thing or a bad thing?

      1. amanfromearth

        "...and, is this a good thing or a bad thing?"

        Yes, .. yes it is.

    2. Ole Juul

      Zuckerberg is no Bill Gates.

      640 million users ought to be enough for anybody.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Why does ..

    anyone use this crap.

  6. Code Monkey
    Windows

    I know we Reg readers are a cyncial bunch but did anyone think their valuation was justified? Anyone at all?

    1. Graham Marsden
      Devil

      @Code Monkey

      Yes, MZ, Bitch!

  7. Khaptain Silver badge
    Meh

    Cats have accounts

    I spoke with a colleague at lunch time who explained to me that she created an account specially for her cat......

    She and her friends have cat pages on which the "cats" exchange information and images "of other cats". Believe it or not my colleague is university educated, hardworking and methodical. She is definately not the kind of person that I would have imagined creating such a page.

    My colleagues and her friends also have their own personal pages.

    I wonder how many other Cat / Dogs / Animal pages exist I presume there are equal amounts of pages for Perverts, Fetichistes, Trees, Badgers, Telephones and endless amounts of useless crap.

    83 Million false accounts probably doesn't reach anywhere beyond 50 % of the crap / false / useless accounts.

    I do not have a FB account so i can't verify the validity of anything FB related, I'll leave that up to the numpties that bought shares.

    1. Geoff May
      Joke

      Re: Cats have accounts

      I wonder if anyone has created an FB account for their ant farm ... one FB account for each ant ...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Cats have accounts

      Slightly off topic, but a decade or so back, when banks and credit card companies were prolific generators of "your application will be instantly approved" mailings, a friend of mine obtained a credit card in the name of her cat. The card was is the name of "Eric De Catt" or something like that (the cats name being Eric), and she used it for all the food and vets bills and related stuff. Totally makes a mockery of security checks, credit references, money laundering regs and all that sh*t. No doubt FB will now start asking for proof of identity for cat and pet accounts.....

      And who really cares about FB and how many dud accounts they have? The companies whole ethos seems very dubious, and I feel sorry for the kids of today who post their entire life on there. It will all come back to haunt them sometime.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Cats have accounts

      My dog never logs in to his Facebook account. He says only chihuahuas go near FB. He's addicted to a dog website called "catsuptrees.com" which he says is educational. I refuse to let him have a headcam so he can upload his own videos, though.

    4. The Baron

      Re: Cats have accounts

      Several of my friends choose to post a large number of photos of their cats on Facebook. Some people enjoyed these endearing pictures, whereas others expressed their ire at the feline spam clogging their what-people-are-having-for-dinner feeds. Their rather neat solution was to set up separate accounts for their cats and have those accounts befriend only those people who wanted to see inordinate numbers of cat photos.

      In fact I rather wish that some of my other friends would adopt the same approach for the large number of photos of their children.

      (Yeah, I know that the correct solution, technically, would have been to establish a group, but I guess most users don't know how to do that whereas they do know how to set up an account...)

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Cats have accounts

      This was "cat" she was talking about was it ? or did she says "pussy"?

      1. Elmer Phud

        Re: Cats have accounts

        I was waiting for that one - took ages.

        (Pubs with several screens showing different Olympic coverage?)

    6. Mike Flugennock

      Re: Cats have accounts

      ...and the sad thing is, the stuff the cats posts is probably way more intelligent than the crap posted by humans.

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

    7. Lars Silver badge
      Pint

      Re: Cats have accounts

      Nothing against your post, but those it really matter how many cats, dogs and parrots have accounts and how many are false, duplicate and so on. who cares how many similar "persons" have an hotmail or gmail account.

      The problem seems to be that Facebook for such a long time tried to speak about how many persons used Facebook. I have a feeling that sooner or later intelligent people give up, I never started, Does not prove me intelligent, however.

    8. Blofeld's Cat
      Happy

      Re: Cats have accounts

      Some of us even set up Facebook accounts for our feeders humans.

      Personally I prefer Twitter.

      "A leaf just blew past"

      "Pounced!"

      "Missed"

      "Going to sleep in sunny spot."

      "Sun moved! Had to move too"

      "Think I can hear a tin being opened..."

    9. Lance 3

      Re: Cats have accounts

      Cats have a FB account? Shouldn't they have nine rather than just one?

      1. ShadowedOne
        Meh

        Re: Cats have accounts

        Seems unfair doesn't it? Cats have nine lives and so many people don't even have one.

  8. Joerg
    FAIL

    Most fake accounts are made by Facebook itself for Companies paying for those...

    ..for marketing reasons.

    Then Facebook starting obliging all users to be certified thru unique SMS numbers.. which is plain illegal and crazy.. since when Facebook turned into FBI ?

    And why no one is stopping them? Obviously they are paying big bucks to politicians and cops to let them do whatever they want like nazis do.

    Facebook only deserves to go bankrupt. It's a disgrace to the world and a problem for democracy.

    1. The Baron
      Happy

      Re: Most fake accounts are made by Facebook itself for Companies paying for those...

      To be fair, it's optional to use Facebook; it's not a necessary public service or a mandatory registration system. So if FB want to have stupid rules, then they can, and the remedy to those who don't like it is simply not to use it... which I wish a lot more people would do, thus hastening FB's demise.

      Although admittedly I would then have to find another way of ascertaining what time my friends awake and what form of meteorological activity they are experiencing.

      1. Stoneshop
        Black Helicopters

        Re: Most fake accounts are made by Facebook itself for Companies paying for those...

        it's optional to use Facebook;

        It's still optional to use Facebook; at least one member of the Cabinet here has suggested integrating DigiD logins (just about anything related to logging in to some government web service) with Farcebook. I'm not sure if her major intestine then lept up and throttled her brain a bit, causing her to quickly add that it would be an alternate authentication method, but it's clearly not beyond the lack of thinking of some minister to come up with this crap.

        And once it's in place, it'd be easy enough to make it compulsory, so that they can drop the normal login service "because so few people use that anymore".

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Flash chuckle

    Maybe the reg readers could arrange to meet up outside the homes of those avaricious souls who bought into the bubble hoping to make a killing and have a little laugh.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I'm sure Zuckerberg is crying all the way to the bank....

  11. John Lilburne

    Nearly everyone I know on FB ...

    ... has a duplicate account for one reason or another.

  12. Dave 27

    Spotify?

    What about all the accounts that have been created purely to get to Spotify?

  13. Senior Ugli
    Go

    Trolling is rife on facebook, its pretty fun too

  14. adnim

    I don't care

    I created a Farcebook page to promote my business.

    I then created an personal account to associate with that business.

    I then created several other accounts just to work out how the Farcebook privacy controls work and who could see what.

    If Farcebook close all my accounts, I will sleep soundly in the comfortable knowledge that I have lost absolutely nothing.

    We need a shrug icon.

    1. The Baron
      Meh

      Re: I don't care

      <-- should fulfil your requirement.

  15. AbortRetryFail

    Second Life

    I know a lot of Second Life residents had a Facebook account for their avatar as an extension to their Second Life presence. Linden Lab even semi-encouraged it inasmuch as you can link your Second Life profile to a Facebook account.

    Apparently Facebook had a massive cull on this last year and removed thousands of such accounts.

    I also have friends who have an 'online persona' type Facebook account that they are less picky about who friends along with a 'proper' account that only actual friends are invited to.

    So, as others have said, alt accounts are more prevalent than Facebook think.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Shock! Horror!

    Well fuck me for a one-eyed goat, you mean people on the twatnet lie!!! I would never have guessed.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Just start at the very beginning

    A quick search on abcdefg would suggest that FB's problem is a lot bigger than 83 million and also that they''ve got a lot of work to do...

  18. ForthIsNotDead
    WTF?

    People still own cats?

    What? Analogue ones?

    Bloody hell.

    1. Chemist

      Re: People still own cats?

      Off-topic but I agree with your username !

    2. LinkOfHyrule
      Coffee/keyboard

      Re: People still own cats?

      Analogue cats! Upvoted!

    3. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

      Re: People still own cats?

      "What? Analogue ones?"

      Of course they bloody do! You young people, with your digital This, and your iThat don't know you're born. Digital cats don't sound right. Their purrs are attenuated by all the sampling artefacts. The purr of an analogue cat sounds much warmer.

    4. tony2heads
      Go

      Re: People still own cats?

      Nobody owns cats; cats have personnel who look after them.

      When people say 'my cat', it is like saying 'my boss'

    5. Blofeld's Cat
      Devil

      Re: People still own cats?

      (Sharp intake of breath)

      Nobody owns a cat. Cats just tolerate the presence of humans that provide food.

      Notice how quickly the purring and rubbing against your legs stops when the minced, unsuccessful racehorse in jelly hits the bowl.

      One day we will develop opposable thumbs and master the tin opener...

      1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

        Re: People still own cats?

        "One day we will develop opposable thumbs and master the tin opener..."

        Jog on kitties!

  19. fandom

    Does it matter?

    From the point of view of Facebook customers, the advertisers, what matters is whether their ads are shown to people who might care for them.

    So for example, a cat food company wants their ads in cat's pages, why should they care if the account doesn't really belong to a real cat?

    1. LaeMing

      Re: Does it matter?

      Good point. I imagine a cat-food company would /prefer/ the page not be owned by an actual cat, but rather the person the cat has buy its food for it.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    keeping work and social life compartmentalised

    Similar reasons for wearing clothes, using envelopes, or drawing the curtains prior to conjugal activities.

    That's why I have 2 FB accounts. It's why mobile phone OS developers are developing virtual machines. I already had a social account, and that's not under my real name, face or birthdate for privacy reasons. And why would I want bosses, customers, colleagues and staff having visibility of my social life ?

    For anyone who wants website cookie tracking split into seperate compartments, use virtual machines. I never overlap compartmentalised personalities onto the same machine.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

  21. Mike Flugennock
    Thumb Up

    Ahhhh, there's good news tonight!

    Facebook shares closed down 4 per cent on Wall Street on Wednesday to $20.9 - which, fact fans, means that the network's value has been nearly halved since its Nasdaq debut in May with its $104bn price tag, or $38 a share IPO...

    Hot damn, popcorn time!

  22. Richard Cartledge
    Thumb Down

    Why would a grown man go on Facebook FFS?

  23. Mike Flugennock

    My account is fake, but not "fake"

    I suppose my Facebook account is technically fake as it's not in my "real" name, but uses the pseudonym I use in my political cartoons, protest videos, blog posts, and last but not least, comments on El Reg.

    However, I run it as if it were a "real" account: I "friend" only people I actually know or work with in person -- mostly progressive activist types -- and generally keep my privacy settings locked down tighter than a prima donna's corset. I use it primarily to promote and share my political cartoon work, so I also try to treat it as if it were a "professional" account -- so almost all the stuff in my feed is activism/news related, no bullshit about what people are having for lunch, none of that crap.

    Still, ironically, because it's under an assumed name with a constructed persona, it's "fake". I've considered setting up a separate account in my "real" name as my "straight" professional account, for posting links to my commercial design portfolio and my resume and such, and perhaps linking it to my LinkedIn account (jeezus, talk about useless; don't even get me started). I haven't bothered with it because I already own a domain name based on my "real" name, complete with an email address and Web site that potential clients can go to, and I just can't see where having a Facebook account in my "real" name would add any value to my "straight" professional Web presence. Based on everything I see going down vis-a-vis Facebook, it seems better for my career if my "real" self just stayed the hell away.

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Thing is, didn't Zuckerburg already sell his shares early on and made his mint at the very beginning of floatation?

    1. fandom
      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Oh, that is brilliant then. Long may it totally collapse. It should never have been worth more than $10 a share!

  25. toadwarrior
    Thumb Up

    shouldn't be too much longer now

    I rexckon facebook will be the new myspace in a relativey short space of time. Perhaps next year. Shame it didn't happen before the IPO.

  26. This post has been deleted by its author

  27. Stoneshop
    Thumb Up

    [Facebook] which is seeing its value close to being halved on Wall Street

    LIKE!

  28. This post has been deleted by its author

  29. Jill Kennedy

    More than that

    Another reason not to believe Facebook's recent earnings results. That number is much MUCH higher - probably around 200 million.

    http://mankabros.com/blogs/onmedea/2012/07/24/should-we-believe-facebooks-earnings/

  30. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What's the stock ticker?

    For those that bought into the IPO - SCKR?

  31. Scott 62

    makes sense, my other half peddles home made greetings cards and other crap like that through Facebook, so paid for a bit of Facebook advertising last month and she suddenly started getting "Likes" from loads of clearly fake accounts...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Which is exactly what the BBC reported .....

  32. mfritz0
    Meh

    I'm not surprised

    I have a friend who died last April and his account is still on Facebook. They never check the obits. I'm sure there are at least 50 million dead people on facebook too. If you really want to check out a social network with false accounts, check out Second Life. I believe about 90% of the customers there have at least 2 accounts, and I personally know about 10 people that have over 25 accounts. It's not uncommon at all for people to create alternate identities. It gives them a chance to take a break from some of the jerks they have to deal with on their other account (main account).

  33. rav
    Facepalm

    Hmmm.. So basically what they are saying is...

    Facebook is Zucked up. Facebook investors have been Zucked over and Facebook isn't worth Zuck all.

  34. Kevin Yeung
    Gimp

    Fakes book

    <eom>

  35. Chris Sake

    But is Facebook advertising a scam?

    According to this (unverified as original post removed from FB) article, 80% of clicks the site in question was paying Facebook for advertising were from bots:

    http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/07/is-facebooks-ad-model-a-scam.html

    1. The Alpha Klutz

      Re: But is Facebook advertising a scam?

      well of course they game it. the whole IPO was a scam. every day in the news you read of what rich people do to hurt you, and you still wont believe it when it happens again (and again)

  36. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "which is seeing its value close to being halved on Wall Street"

    "which is seeing its value approaching 5x what it is actually worth, from its initial 10x on Wall Street"

    There. Fixed.

  37. The Alpha Klutz

    take the money and run Zuck, run!

    its okay, we know you dont care.

  38. VulcanV5

    Senilitybook

    There's something so senile about Facebook and its 'likes' that the very notion of signing up to it baffles me. I don't have in mind any image of a massively effective ad machine that forensically targets economically attractive demographics, rather a group of old -- very, very, very old -- care home residents sitting on a semi-circle of chairs as Matron communicates slooowly in child-speak: 'Everyone nod who LIKES semolina for their dinner' / 'You all LIKE it?' / 'Aw, I LIKE semolina too. Altogether now: we're H A P P Y . . .'

    That said, those senile I LIKErs are cerebrally a damn sight more intelligent than the morons and the chancers who believed FB was anything other than just one more hula hoop craze.

  39. Brian Allan

    And how many were created by FaceBook prior to the IPO?

    I'm just wondering...

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