Models Direct – 83 million fake profiles on Facebook

Models Direct - FB logoFake profiles – Report from Models Direct

Like everybusy modelling agency who works online, Models Direct has a strong presence on each of the most well-known social networking websites, including Facebook, Pinterest, Google Plus and LinkedIn, which is why the management of the agency were shocked to hear that more than 83 million users on Facebook are not real.

Many of the ‘likes’ and friends on fan-pages say Models Direct, have been reported as being from automated or duplicate fake profiles, with the latest figures suggesting that more than 8 percent of all of the social network site’s users (995 million in total) are fake.

The discovery was made during Facebook’s filings which were published recently – these revealed that 83.09 million users were fake, with approximately four percent coming from copied profiles, which Facebook has said are accounts which a user keeps in addition to their primary profile.

Just over two percent of these fake profiles were named as ‘misclassified accounts’ which Facebook management describes as profiles set up for pets, organisations and businesses, whilst another one percent were revealed to be ‘undesirable’ profiles – ones which breach the networks terms of service, in that they are set up specifically to send spam to others comment Models Direct.

Models Direct say the good news is that the findings won’t have any detrimental effect on the average person’s use of Facebook. However, for those that use Facebook for advertising purposes, the enormous quantity of fake profiles could cause problems. An investigation was recently conducted by the BBC, in which a tech journalist by the name of Rory Cellan Jones created a fake business called Virtual-Bagel, so that he could examine where the fake ‘likes’ and fans were coming from. It was discovered that many originated from Asia and the Middle East. Although the journalist concluded that these false profiles were not a major cause of concern at the moment, he added that with the increasing popularity of the site, this could become problematic over the course of the next few years, as more and more businesses make use of this site in order to increase awareness of their brand.