Facebook may have 200 million fake accounts

“In the Q4 of 2017, we estimate duplicate accounts may have represented approximately 10 per cent of our worldwide MAUs (Monthly Active Users),” Facebook’s annual report said. “We believe the percentage of duplicate accounts is meaning fully higher in developing markets such as India, Indonesia, and the Philippines, as compared to more developed markets,” it said.

As of December 31, 2017, the site had 2.13 billion MAUs, from December 31, 2016. MAUs were 1.86 billion as of December 31, 2016 with 114 million “duplicate accounts.” Worldwide Daily Active Users touched 1.40 billion on average in Dec 2017 from 1.23 billion in Dec 2016. “Users in India, Indonesia, and Brazil represented key sources of growth in DAUs during Dec 2017, relative to the same period in 2016,” FB said. 

A duplicate account is one that a user maintains in addition to his or her principal account. While “false” accounts have been divided into two categories- user-misclassified accounts, where users have created personal profiles for a business, firm, or non-human entity such as a pet and undesirable accounts, which represent user profiles that the site determine are intended to be used for purposes that violate FB’s terms of service, such as spamming.