Facebook removes fake accounts and likes

Facebook is attempting to purge the social networking site of fake accounts and page followers in a bid to make the social network more attractive to genuine advertisers.

Already a number of pages have suffered large drops in the number of ‘likes' including some of those for apparently popular games such as Texas HoldEm Poker; which according to Pagedata lost 96,317 ‘likes' on Wednesday.

Read more: Social network news | Facebook and Twitter tips

Facebook warned in August that it intended tackling the issue of bogus accounts, often set up by spammers who attempt to make another page appear more popular by clicking on the ‘like' button.

The social networking site, which was floated on the stock exchange in May, wants to attract more advertisers as share prices plummet; standing at $20.62 on Thursday down from the public offering of $38 (£23) in May.

On its blog entitled Improvements To Our Site Integrity Systems the Facebook security team said: "A Like that doesn't come from someone truly interested in connecting with a Page benefits no one.

"Real identity, for both users and brands on Facebook, is important to not only Facebook's mission of helping the world share, but also the need for people and customers to authentically connect to the Pages they care about...these third-party vendors often attempt to use malware or other forms of deception to generate fraudulent Likes, which is harmful to all users and the internet as a whole."

The social networking site is also asking Facebook users to identify if their friends are real according to the TPM Lab. Data from a pop-up survey asking people to validate their friends' names could also be used to weed out bogus accounts or shut down those that have breached the social networking site's official policy on using genuine names.

The pop up window displays the profile picture, name and current location of a user's friend and asks: "Please help us understand how people are using Facebook. Your response is anonymous and won't affect your friend's account. Is this your friend's real name?"

The Facebook user can choose between four answers: "Yes", "No", "I don't know this person", or "I don't want to answer".