The social network Facebook is one of the leading in the world. The number of its users is measured in millions, and revenues - in billions. However, the digital age has spawned digital scams as well. Recently, data on fake accounts of Mark Zuckerberg's network were disclosed.
About 9% of all accounts, and this is almost 80 million personal pages registered in the social network, are fictitious and duplicate. In total, at the end of June 2012, Facebook had almost a billion users. These statistics were presented in a report to the SEC - US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Facebook categorizes fake accounts into three categories: duplicate, "unwanted" and unsystematic. The March Fake Accounts report had a different figure of 4.8% of the total number of users, representing nearly 46 million.
By agreement, Facebook allows anyone to create only one account. It is forbidden to create an account on behalf of non-existent persons and other people. Nevertheless, on the social network you can find, for example, an active correspondence between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.
"Unwanted" accounts have about fourteen million pages, which is 1.5%. This category includes accounts that are registered on Facebook for the purpose of registering with other services or in order to send spam. According to experts, marks like in the news chronicle can distort the perception of information for the benefit of criminals or terrorists, rather than safety.
The unsystematic category (2.4%, nearly thirty million accounts) includes accounts that are created by users for their pets, groups or organizations. These kinds of profiles are allowed by Facebook only as a page, similar to the VKontakte group.
The Facebook moderator group is blocking "unnecessary" accounts. And the data provided in the reports can be underestimated by half, because it is impossible to recognize all fraudsters, as well as bots.
Limited Run has released data that indicate that about 80% of ad clicks are by bots, yet Facebook is pushing firms to invest as much money as possible on social media ads.
