Social Networking website – Facebook has over the billion people on its network. In this jam packed network, problem of fake facebook account is increasing day after day. Facebook disclosed that 4.8% of their accounts were fake accounts in Q2 2012. This is inclusive of duplicate accounts and accounts that violate facebook rules. So to determine who is fake or real in our facebook friend list is important. However one does not need to be tech savvy person to track it down. You can take use of below mentioned strategies to track the fake accounts.
- Do you know the person in real life? Don’t add them if you don’t know them.
- Wall Content: Do you see some regular content on their wall? If no it surely is fake. If wall content is something like “Do I know you” type questions it is bound to be fake one.
- Photographs: Check out for the photographs. Does the collection looks like taken from the net? If yes, there is higher possibility of it being a fake account. Fake ones usually tag photos more often than real accounts. Profile with just 1 or 2 photographs should also raise a alarm.
- Number of friends: Average number of friends on the fake profile is 6 times more than real profiles. (726 versus 130).
- Mutual Friends: Do the profile has mutual friends and is their some conversation happening between them? Be aware if the answer is no.
- Google at the rescue: Save facebook profile image in question and search it in Google Images. It will scan the photograph and will throw all possible links connected to it.
- Layout: A profile using pre timeline layout can also be the clue to investigate further.
- A supermodel type and everything perfect looking profile should raise the red flag.
Dr. Paul Judge, chief research officer at Barracuda Networks, said in a statement. "These fake profiles and apps give attackers a long-lived path to continuously present malicious links to innocent users. We have analyzed thousands of fake accounts to determine features and patterns that distinguish them from real users, and created a feature-based heuristic engine to distinguish real users from fake profiles." Millions of Facebook users tend to accept friend requests blindly. Next time, when you get the friend request do remember to check on the above points before accepting it. It is always better to be safe than sorry.
