Facebook has become an essential communication
tool in our day-to-day lives. The social networking giant, which filed for IPO
last week, has been consistently making efforts to boost user security on its
platform, and stave off spammers, scammers and fake users. Barracuda Labs, a
global multi-disciplinary research and threat analysis firm has conducted a study to identify ways in which Facebook users can spot fake Facebook profiles.
Barracuda analyzed 2,884 active
Facebook accounts to identify key differences between average real user
accounts and fake accounts created by attackers and spammers.
According to the study:
- 97 percent of fake profiles are created using women’s names, and 58 percent claim to be interested in both men and women.
- The fake profiles averaged 726 friends, while the authentic ones averaged just 130.
- 15 percent of the actual profiles had no status updates, while that figure soared to 43 percent for the fakes.
- Fake accounts use photo tags 100 times more than real users, 136 tags per four photos versus one tag per four photos
“Likes, News Feeds and Apps have
helped lead Facebook to its social network dominance and now attackers are
harnessing those same features to efficiently scale their efforts. These fake
profiles and apps give attackers a long-lived path to continuously present
malicious links to innocent users,” said Dr. Paul Judge, chief research officer
at Barracuda Networks.
Barracuda Labs has also come up with
an infographic, to list out the common characteristics of fake Facebook user
accounts. Have a look at it here.
source:buzzom
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