Facebook is the social network par excellence and a powerful communication tool with which we can contact any of the 1,000 million users around the world who have a profile registered, almost nothing. We know the advantages of Facebook very well, being able to share our experiences with friends, participate in all kinds of events, get professional contacts or meet new friends among many other possibilities.
However, not everyone who opens a profile on Facebook has these intentions, there are many cases in which we find false profiles that pose as other people, sometimes even celebrities. The intentions behind the creation of a fake profile may be harmless, such as collecting votes for sweepstakes, but there are many profiles that are created to try to deceive or scam other users.
It is estimated that there are more than 80 million fake profiles registered on Facebook. Although it is a small percentage if we compare it with the total, they are still too many. Most of us have come across profiles of dubious origin , either because they have added us directly or because we have detected them in other circumstances. We offer you some tricks to be able to detect when an account is false.
There are several details that can make us suspicious about a specific profile, for example that it has many friends in a very short period of time , that no status update is seen on its wall and that we only see application ads or that the photo in profile, it looks like it was taken from an image bank. The first thing we have to do if we come across a suspicious profile on Facebook is to check the origin of its profile picture. This is the most effective method to detect this type of deception. In order to know more about the person behind that image, it is advisable to save the image on our computerby right clicking on it. Then we enter the Google image search section and click on the small camera icon that is located on the right. This option gives us two possibilities. On the one hand we can copy the URL address of the image or directly upload the image that we have saved. Google will show all the results given that photograph , if it has been used in any blog or web network and if there are more profiles on Facebook with the same image. If it is the case that there are several profiles with the same image, it is almost certain proof that that person is not who they say they are, and it is also very likely that the other profiles are also false.
It is also interesting to check the rest of the photographs you have in your profile . The normal thing in an authentic profile is that there are several photo albums in which more friends appear and that these are tagged. If the person does not have photos with other people or if they are not labeled is another reason to be suspicious. Facebook is a social network to interact with other people and if we do not see labels, comments or "likes" it is quite rare, although it is not proof that it is a fake profile. If it is impossible for us to verify the authenticity by contacting the person who runs the profile, we can also try to talk to their closest friendsor mutual friends (if we have any) to verify that this person does indeed exist. Google is the best tool to find information on the Internet and it is very useful in these cases, any information related to the alleged scammer can be searched on Google, for example phone numbers, email address, place of work or full name .
There are quite serious cases of identity theft that are intended to annoy or ridicule a specific person. On the North American television channel MTV a program called "Catfish, Lies on the Net" is broadcast in which they are dedicated to uncovering false profiles and all these techniques can be seen in practice . These tips are good to keep in mind to put into practice if you receive a friend request from someone who is suspicious to you. You should never give personal information to strangers and if you do not know the person, do not approve of the friendship until you verify the reason why they contacted you.
