
Fake profiles – Facebook not even trying - cowardlydragon
I now have had a half-dozen fake profiles of people I know set up with the same name, basic information, and profile pictures.<p>Facebook is, allegedly, an amazing company with some of the best developers ... that don&#x27;t have a basic check if a new profile has the same name and profile picture of an existing one that is clearly fraudulent.
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VertexRed
There isn't enough info to automatically close accounts just because they use
the same name and profile photo as other users (keep in mind that profile
pictures can be of anything such as a flag found through Google Images).

They probably only investigate and close imposters if they receive complaints
from other users.

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jordansmithnz
I understand what you're getting at, but as someone else commented the new
profile could be the real user, and the pre-existing profile a fake.

Perhaps machine learning would be able to identify fake accounts with a higher
degree of certainty than the 'matching name/picture' check, and only fakes
with a high certainty rate are deleted.

From a different angle though, if no one has reported a fake account - does
Facebook care about the existence of a fake account? Some friends a while ago
created a fake account of a meme amongst our group. Funny, and not harming
anyone. If Facebook blocked this account it would seem a little
domineering/controlling. I'm not sure that's the impression Facebook wants to
leave on people who make these sorts of accounts for a laugh.

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brak1
They prob prefer to have fake accounts than to block a real user that wants to
sign up (or lost his email account and signs up again, etc etc)

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atomical
When Facebook was young I had my account suspended because I used a fake name.
I reached out to support and had a conversation with a real person about my
supposed name, "Joe Blow." I guess at some point they stopped doing that.

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Broken_Hippo
There are a couple of things that make this more difficult: The fact that
strangers and family members alike can look strikingly similar and the fact
that a lot of folks have the same or similar names. Heck, it could even be
that a son has the same name as the father: Father has a younger profile
picture, and the son uses that picture after the father dies.

Until the systems can sort this stuff out, these things are simply going to be
an issue.

It isn't even that the profiles are necessarily fraudulent. I know there are
plenty of young (and older) occultists that keep two seperate accounts, in
part to be able to keep that part of their life private and away from extended
family and work. This happens in other circles as well.

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ergot
Facebook is testing a feature that alerts you if someone is impersonating your
account: [http://mashable.com/2016/03/22/facebook-impersonation-
alert/](http://mashable.com/2016/03/22/facebook-impersonation-alert/)

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leksak
What's your question?

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slim
Sometimes the most recently created profile is the real profile. For example I
could use your picture in Twitter to create an account in facebook. You will
probably use the same picture in the future whe you setup a facebook account.

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crazypyro
Counter-anecdote: I've reported quite a number of accounts that have tried to
add me and Facebook will now tell you when they remove a fake account. It
gives some small incentive to report the profiles.

