When it comes to social networks, we know that there are a lot of people who are being impersonated by others. Impersonating somebody on a social network, like Facebook as an example, isn’t all that difficult, just find the person you’re going to impersonate, grab some pictures and information, open up an account, and use what you’e collected to make a fake account. Why would anybody want to do this? Chances are, people would create these fake accounts under your name just so they can get some new friends and spam or harass them in the future.
Fortunately, Facebook has had enough of this, and they’re now working on a new tool that works to prevent the harassment and impersonation that will plague countless online users. It was reported by Mashable that the tool will notify you about any type of impersonated account and give you a chance to identify the fake profile and give you the ability to identify the account.
The process that the tool follows is wholly automated, although impersonated accounts are going to be manually flagged first by Facebook employees.
This feature has been available since November of last year, and is live in 75% of the world, according to Antigone Davis, Facebook’s Head of Global Safety. This feature could be quite important, especially in certain parts of the world were impersonation could have very negative social ramifications.
Although the initial reason for this feature came out of a societal concern for women’s safety, it is very helpful to those who have high profile visibility, and the chances of being impersonated is high.
There will be more safety features being rolled out by Facebook, such as one that helps eliminate non-consensual intimate images. The second safety feature Facebook will roll out is a photo checkup that educates Facebook users on privacy settings. This will help those posting their images to make sure they know who is actually seeing them.