Roger-Luc Chayer
The epidemic of fake Facebook accounts is growing to such proportions that, in fact, it is becoming difficult to sort things out with all the requests we receive.
For example, even though Facebook closed three billion fake accounts between March and October 2020, there are thousands created every day, and in my experience about 95% of the requests I get on the Gay Globe Page are. by fraudulent accounts, using photos of others. This is also easy to know since two very effective services make it possible to find the people in most photos and see that these people have nothing to do with the contact request received. These services are: Google Face Recognition and Tiny Eye Reverse Image Search.
Another way to know that many requests are from fake accounts is to notice the similarity in the way they operate. If, during the day, I receive ten contact requests and eight start with: “Cc or Cuckoo, I apologize for bothering you like this, but I wanted to get to know you better, if you don’t mind”… When eight people copy and paste the same text, you can be sure that these accounts are fake or malicious, especially if they are from women or straight people who don’t bother to read the title of the GAY page. World!!!
Another way is to notice the similarities in the profile information. When, in “About”, you notice that they were supposedly born in Europe, that they studied far from their hometown to finally settle and work in the heart of Africa, it doesn’t make any sense.
Same thing for the opposite. A Nigerien, for example, who studies in a high school in a city of his country and declares to work in Switzerland at the age of 23 years for Gucci or large companies like IBM or the embassy of the United Arab Emirates, has little chance to be a real account. When it’s implausible, it’s wrong.
Another way to differentiate between real and fake accounts is to visit the person’s page history. Since these fake accounts are opened with intent to defraud, and the same scammer can open 30 or 50 a day, there is no time to create a history that would make the person look like they have a life.
Usually, fake accounts have a nice greeting photo, one or two very recent messages, and always end with a date of birth. Typically, people who have a real Facebook account feed it regularly or sporadically, so the history exists.
This is why, on Facebook, one should exercise the most basic of caution before entering into a dialogue with accounts which contain the elements mentioned above. Unfortunately, there will always be those who are desperate in life who are ready to communicate with anyone and do anything to get out of their boredom, hopelessness or loneliness. For these people, there is nothing we can do!