Facebook removed more than three billion fake accounts from October to March, twice as many as the previous six months, the social networking company said Thursday. In a new report, Facebook said it saw a "steep increase" in the creation of abusive, fake accounts in the past six months. As a result, the company estimates that five per cent of its 2.4 billion monthly active users are fake accounts. This is up from an estimated three to four per cent in the previous six months when Facebook blocked 1.5 billion accounts. Of the 3.4 billion accounts removed in the six-month period, 1.2 billion came during the fourth quarter of 2018 and 2.2 billion during the first quarter of this year.

Source: CBC News May 23, 2019 16:33 UTC