Like it or not, fake accounts are part of the social media landscape. People will create accounts with false information for a variety of reasons, many of which are innocuous. A person may create accounts to have additional neighbors or allies
needed in a game, or as a parody to satirize a person or an organization. Some people will also use false information when creating their account to hide their true identity, whether as a defensive measure or to make it more difficult for police to
trace back their actions. A common reason why people create fake accounts is because they wouldn’t otherwise be allowed on a site. The person may be banned from a site or chat room, or unable to create a legitimate account because it would violate the Terms of Service. As we mentioned in Chapter 4, according to a 2011 survey by Consumer Reports,
approximately 7.5 million of the minors who use Facebook were younger than 13, and of this, more than 5 million of them were 10 and under. Younger users create fake accounts to access to the site, providing a bogus birthdate to bypass the age restriction. If the fake account is removed, many people will simply get a new email address and create a new fake account.