Facebook: 83 Million Fake Users

By Barbara E. Hernandez

| Thursday, Aug 2, 2012 | Updated 10:26 PM PDT

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Facebook is redesigning the profile pages of its 500 million-plus users to make it more of a reflection of their real lives and emphasize one of the site's most popular features, photos.

Facebook revealed that about 83 million of its users are fake.

The social network announced that 8.7 percent of its user accounts are duplicates, misclassified or undesirable accounts, according to CNET. That's a rise from the 5.5 percent Facebook estimated last March.

The news came from its quarterly earnings report, where the social network also revealed its finances and that it had 955 million monthly active users.

While this may seem like people are creating fake accounts, it likely means that Facebook is tracking these accounts much better -- so much better it can break them down into duplicate accounts (4.8 percent), user-misclassified accounts (2.4 percent)and undesirable accounts (1.5 percent).

The problem is that this is now public knowledge and shareholders and users alike can wonder how many more of these false accounts might be lurking out there. Can we really believe Facebook's 955 million monthly active users is accurate, or is that just give or take a 100 million?