Facebook Targets 76 Million Fake Users In War On Bogus Accounts

via businessinsider.com

Facebook has not gotten its fake account problem under control — yet — but it appears to be making progress.

In its annual report, Facebook said that the number of duplicate accounts on its network had risen to 5 percent of all accounts in Q4 2012, up from 4.8 percent in Q2 2012.

However, the number of accidentally misclassified accounts and the number of abusive accounts (run by spammers and the like) has declined.

Overall, the total percentage of fake accounts declined from 8.7 percent to 7.2 percent. In whole numbers, the number of duplicate accounts went up from about 45.8 million to 52.8 million; but the total number of fake accounts (which includes abusive and misclassified accounts) declined from 83 million to 76 million over the last six months...

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Fake Letters Inform Florida Residents They Can’t Vote

via newsfeed.time.com

For some Florida voters, last weekend started on a low note — literally.

Last Friday, letters that questioned registered voters’ eligibility began appearing in mailboxes across the state, NBC News reported. The letters, which resemble an authentic message from the Florida Division of Elections with a letterhead and contact information, notify recipients that the department has gleaned “information” concerning “citizenship status, bringing into question your eligibility as a registered voter.” The document also informs voters that they must complete a Voter Eligibility Form and return it to the Supervisor of Elections Office within 15 days or else they will surrender their eligibility to vote. Chris Cate, a spokesperson for the Florida Secretary of State’s Office, told NBC that as of Oct. 24, state officials have received reports of between 50 and 100 of these letters from individuals in at least 28 counties. Cate also told NPR that although voters in both parties have received the mailings, most of which were sent from Seattle, Republicans constitute the bulk of the addressees.

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Twitter Has A Big Problem With Fake User Accounts

via businessinsider.com

Everyone knows there's a sordid industry around selling Twitter followers.

But on Friday, Jason Ding, a researcher from security vendor Barracuda Networks, quantified how bad the problem is for Twitter and how these guys fly under the radar.

For 75 days, Ding investigated the fake Twitter account business. He and his team fired up three Twitter accounts and then bought 20,000 or 70,000 Twitter followers for each.

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New Facebook stats: 83 million fake users

via www.gadgetell.com">technologytell.com

Facebook, the social networking giant, released the latest breakdown of what they consider to be fake users at thefirst quarterly earnings report as a public company. This is the numbers breakdown:

4.8% duplicate accounts

2.4% user-misclassified

1.5% undesirable accounts

Total: 8.7% or about 83 million fake users

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Fake Realistic and Incredible 3D pop-out paintings Collection

via webneel.com

Picture this. You're walking in a gallery, along a wall of oil portraits - all of them impressive works of art. They're so good, they're almost popping off the canvas. Until you realise....they actually are. Al Jazeera reports from Washington DC.

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The Unreal World in Photos

via theatlantic.com

Our modern world is full of simulations, from synthesized human voices to realistic security drills, representational art to CGI-filled blockbuster movies. Gathered below is a collection images of things that are real, but not quite real -- mockups, practice drills, lifelike works of art, simulators, puppets, models, prototypes, automatons, and more.

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20 Fictional Logo Designs for Your Inspiration

via inspirationfeed.com

Movies have always been a source of inspiration for designers, artists and other creative thinkers. From the beginning till the end, a good movie offers a variety of content which is really helpful if we want to grab something out of it instead of just watching it and then back to our work after it is over.

As I am a big movie lover, I watch lots and lots of movie in my free time, but as active viewer having a small notepad or a piece of paper noting down all the important and useful facts that I watch in it: like new ideas, concepts, gadgets, unique designs etc.

Here in this article I am sharing with you some of the fictional logos which are collected and recreated me as a part of my small project named “Fictgo”.

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Chinese tech counterfeiting, visualized

via techi.com

It’s hard to tell the difference sometimes. At other times, it’s comically easy.

Apple and other companies have fallen victim to many counterfeit technology stores and products in China for years, but it seems as if there has been an influx of activity in recent months that’s been making the news. In a land that is growing into its own in pseudo-capitalism but that’s still shrouded by government-induced mystery, it can be extremely lucrative to sell fake merchandise for a little while, knowing that someday it will likely get busted.

Until it does, there’s a yuan to make.

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Fake Instagram Android App Contains malware

via businessinsider.com

There's a phony version of Instagram for Android floating around containing malware that can access your text messages, according to security research firm Sophos.

TNW picked up the Sophos report.

Sophos says the fake Instagram app is available on a few websites, including one based in Russia.

The app pretends to be a fully-functional version of Instagram, but doesn't always connect to the photo-sharing service's network.

The best way to protect yourself from accidentally downloading the fake Instagram app is to only use the official Google Play market on your phone.

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The Crazy Story of the Man Who Pretended to Invent Email

via businessinsider.com

Shiva Ayyadurai, is a shimmering intellectual. He holds four degrees from MIT (where he lectures), numerous patents, honors, and awards. He also says he invented email, and there's a global conspiracy against him.

Guess which one of these statements is true.

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Most Famous Faked Photos

via life.com

In a world where knowledge is power, a healthy skepticism is a trait worth cultivating. Pictures, after all, do lie -- a reality that's never been more true than in the age of Photoshop and the Internet, where anyone with even modest skills can turn fakery into globally accepted truth in a matter of minutes. Stark evidence of the power of fake photos most recently came to light in the wake of Osama bin Laden's violent death at the hands of U.S. special forces. Even U.S. senators were duped into believing that a rather crude photomanipulation (above, left) -- a composite of a bin Laden pic (right) and a dead gunshot victim -- was a classified picture of the al Qaeda founder's corpse. Since photography's invention, of course, pictures have been staged, misattributed, altered, and cropped, often by photo editors whose identities are never revealed. What follows are some of the most infamous, significant faked photos in history: pictures that were initially believed to be authentic; shocked the world when they were released; but were ultimately debunked.

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The Art of Faked Photos

via orphicpixel.com

The art of faked photos is as old as photography itself. The age of the printed picture gave birth to the age of photographic hoaxes almost immediately. This unsung art form has been used by the media, governments, cults, and conspiracy theorists to promote various kinds of propaganda in the last century, and the age of the internet has only advanced the proliferation of faked photographs.

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