More than 80 million accounts on Facebook "fake"

Facebook has revealed that around 8.7 per cent - 83 million - of its total user base - 955 million - is made up of fake accounts. The social networking site made the revelation in a quarterly filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

It also admitted that around five per cent of its total user base has more than one account on the site.

The figure submitted to the SEC is slightly higher than the one previously revealed by the social networking giant. The Guardian stated that earlier this year that Facebook estimated that up to six per cent of user accounts on the site were either fakes or duplicates.

However, it is now counting mis-classified accounts and undesirable accounts - which make up 2.4 and 1.5 per cent respectively.

Facebook stated in its quarterly SEC filing: "While these numbers are based on what we believe to be reasonable estimate of our user base for the applicable period of measurement, there are inherent challenges in measuring usage of our products across online and mobile populations around the world."

Although the news is unlikely to provide marketers operating social media marketing campaigns on the site or companies running Facebook ads with too much cause for concern, it did cause the value of shares in Facebook to fall below $20 - their lowest price since the company was floated back in May.

There was a recovery of sorts though with prices climbing back up to $20.04 when trading ended for the day.

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