New Delhi: As instances of cyber impersonation on social networking sites rise, an Israel-based start-up has developed an application, FakeOff, which helps to identify fake accounts on Facebook.

The app on the world’s largest social networking platform claims to protect users from scams devised by fake Facebook users, who are mistaken for genuine ‘new friends’.

“Recent statistics show that at least 10 per cent of about 1.35 billion Facebook users are not authentic. Besides, there are millions of users who create fake identities and appear as regular users,” FakeOff creator Eliran Shachar told PTI.

Fake profiles are divided into several groups including criminals, commercial and psychological, that can risk reputations (identity theft), children (paedophiles and sexual abuse), property (home break-ins) and personal safety, he added.

“FakeOff app uses sophisticated algorithm to investigate the behaviour of suspect ‘friends’ and rank them according to a 1-10 credibility score. It scans up to 365 days of timeline activity for every suspect Facebook friend and checks for abnormal activity,” Shachar said.

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