You may Get Call from Facebook if Profile Identity is Suspect

Social networking giant Facebook is making a “huge effort” to weed out fake profiles to prevent misuse of such identities, a senior company official has said.

“Absolutely, there is a huge effort,” Facebook India business manager Pavan Varma told PTI when asked about the company’s action on this front.

If Facebook doubts the ownership of an account, it will ask the user to identify himself/herself, he said.

“The doubt about the authenticity of the account will arise if an account has a generic name instead of a proper name, uses images of celebrities/cartoon characters as display pictures, or does not have “enough friends”, Varma said.

“It could even be that Facebook comes back to you saying, ‘could you help us identify yourself if you don’t have enough friends, because we don’t want fake identities,” he said.

“We are worried about the experience we deliver….It’s not about protecting our brand identity so much,” he said.

Recently there were reports of fake accounts being created by computer programs, which are used for inflating the number of “likes” on Facebook page for a brand.