Facebook testing impersonation tool

alerting users when their names and profile pictures are being used

[bill]

http://mashable.com/2016/03/22/facebook-impersonation-alert/ [mashable.com]

Facebook is testing a feature that alerts you if someone is impersonating your account

The social network is testing a new feature that will automatically alert you if it detects another user is impersonating your account by using your name and profile photo.

When Facebook detects that another user may be impersonating you, it will send an alert notifying you about the profile. You'll then be prompted to identify if the profile in question is impersonating you by using your personal information, or if it belongs to someone else who is not impersonating you.

[tangor]

Wonder how long it will take the impersonators to impersonate the impersonation tool. (wink)

I suspect the two step process (notify you and you prove your id) is to prevent what they could do themselves as being "censorship" or "banning" users.

[keyplyr]

what they could do themselves

Yup, yet another example of passing the buck to the end-user.

[OT] Brings back memories of when they had a wide infection of some type, they disconnected my account and would not let me activate it again until I downloaded their anti-malware software and ran it on my machine, then had to upload the results to them to prove it wasn't me that was causing their problems. Took 3 days to get my account back. Of course they offered no explanation why they thought my account might have been the problem. [/OT]

[bill]

There's an entire industry revolving around fake profiles. There are just so many of them that they need to automate some of the detection and rely on the users to handle their own issues it seems. Is this evidence of Facebook admitting the extent of the problem that they have with fake profiles?

[keyplyr]

I get friend requests a couple times a week from teenage cuties :) When I look at their profile there's always just one or two friends so I report as a fake account, but I did learn the hard way.

What I"ve seen happen is, they get a few friends then sleep for a couple weeks. Then in the middle of the night, post spammy content in the 'reply' area of their new friends posts, thus going undetected by the mods who mostly vet new posts.

[tangor]

I get those "99 notifications for you on FaceBook" all the time, sometimes twice daily. Since I am now essentially cookie free browsing for all sites except those I explicitly trust ... such as Webmasterworld, I have not been able to access my FB account. If FB dropped only one cookie it would be okay .... it is the other six that I have a problem with. :)

Frankly, I've never tried to use FB re: "social marketing" and keep it pretty darn simple, truly family and friends .... most of whom I have outlived. Have an aging laptop that I connect about once a month to check FB, otherwise, that machine is off the web and all cookies (including the LSOs) are scrubbed before I turn it off and back into the bag.