How to identify fake Facebook account by Ukpono Etuk

Facebook is one of the far-reaching networks of the internet and it is used by different kinds of people all over the world. These include good and dubious characters that send you friend requests. However, it is important you know when a suspicious friend request comes  as that might be a scam which may be targeting you. Below are the tips:

*Profile Picture

The first thing you will notice with any suspicious account is the profile picture, if you have any doubt on any  profile picture, just do  reverse search of the image.  For this, save the image on your computer, then go to  image.google.com and click on the camera option (search by image) and then select your image and then Google will check for the image on the web and if you find that image at any other sites like 18+ then you will get to know that the account is fake.

*Timeline

The other major thing to notice is the timeline of the suspect. You will notice, one common thing about all the fake accounts is that they are mostly females but not all female accounts are fake.

The profile picture will be limited from two to three, with only random celebrity image. Therefore, if the person did not update her status and no comments from his/her friend on the status, then probably the account is not genuine. Again, if the about page of the timeline does not give you the desired info, then the account is probably fake, they will only update Spam link on their timeline.

*Profiles with the girls’ faces

Generally, the fake accounts are created with the profile pictures of beautiful girls’ faces, which attract other users to confirm their request and then chat with them. You must beware of such accounts and if you find such, then you must surely back-trace the image with the method given in the first method.

*Birthday on 1st Jan

There are reports that most of the fake accounts that have been detected were having birth date as 1st January which is very common and easy to set for the person creating the fake accounts. So you must beware of such accounts and take proper action if you find such accounts on your friends list.

*Look up user activities

Have a look at the suspect’s activities, if the person is just going to add new friends and had no page liked or any joined group, then it must be a fake account. As the user wants to add as many friends as possible to promote something later.

 *Contact number in girl’s profile

Most of the  girl’s fake profile will have its contact number in the info section of the profile and you know girls hardly give out their numbers in the public easily.

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