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”, Mr 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.
Facebook had recently said it would be taking out fake “likes” generated by spammers, malware and black marketers.
Mr Varma said advertisers must also shed the obsession with numbers. “How does an advertiser today treat a Facebook page? It is treated as a place where they just come with a number of people who are there. But that is a wrong way of doing it,” he said, stressing that the conversations around the brand should assume importance rather than the numbers.
Mere “likes” on the page do not help a brand, he said.
Companies generally pay Facebook for a dedicated page on its platform that helps them connect with the target audience.
Mr Varma, who was speaking to PTI on the sidelines of a banking summit, said Facebook, as a medium, is completely secure and cited the case of ICICI Bank, which now offers basic services over the Facebook page by integrating its net banking platform with the social networking site.
He added that IDBI Bank claims it has over five lakh fans on Facebook.
Keywords: Facebook, fake profiles, Pavan Varma, cyber security, Facebook likes, Facebook page
What Facebook really lacks is a 'disklike' button.
When that comes, all these companies will run away from Facebook, I am sure ! ;)
this will be appreciable imitative if taken by the company since misuse
by fake profiles increased day by day creating problem for
the people. undoubtedly the facebook is popular social networking site
for the day . so people may expect some security in view of this we
welcome the initiative.
This action on the part of FB is over due-there are plenty of fake a/cs
floating around that is undesirable & a threat to genuine a/c
holders!The earlier the better.
Weeding out fake account has been much desired step from FB. These
accounts are also a nuisance to genuine users. At least they should make
some ID mandatory for opening an account. From what I know personally,I
can guess that 15% account holders on FB are minors. This step is also
needed from Mail services.
It is the need of the hour.Please go after those fake fellows.
Facebook is a success story itself when social net work is taken for
consideration, but I do often doubt the authenticity of facebook page
and account holders. There are photos of scenery and animals in
facebook, the name network itself" suggests show your real face" but
people are misusing it as usual. of course there should be some
control, through mobile phones or other method to prove the genuineness
of the account holder, the facebook group can fix it easily if they
need to.
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