Facebook Had 76 Million Fake Accounts in 2012

Popular social networking site Facebook housed 76 million fake accounts in the year 2012, according to a new report.

In an annual report filed at the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission, Facebook said out of the 1.06 billion user accounts on its platform 76 million accounts were found to be phony. The company catalogued these phony accounts under three types which include duplicate accounts, misclassified accounts and undesirable accounts.

"The numbers of our monthly active users (MAUs), daily active users (DAUs), mobile MAUs, and average revenue per user (ARPU) are calculated using internal company data based on the activity of user accounts," explained the report, as quoted by Tech2. "While these numbers are based on what we believe to be reasonable estimates of our user base for the applicable period of measurement, there are inherent challenges in measuring usage of our products across large online and mobile populations around the world."

Facebook totaled 53 million accounts as duplicate accounts and almost 14 million accounts as misclassified accounts. The company noted that more number of such accounts were from the countries like Indonesia and Turkey and fewer accounts came from the US and Australia. Facebook's efforts to rein such kind of activities its platform are still continuing.

 "We are continually seeking to improve our ability to identify duplicate or false accounts and estimate the total number of such accounts, and such estimates may change due to improvements or changes in our methodology," the report said.