Will Verified Accounts Save Facebook From Clone Profiles?

A recent spate of cloned profiles on Facebook has raised security issues with many users, this coming off the back of a number of different complaints against Facebook and other companies being used by the NSA to collect information.

Both ordinary individuals and popular personalities have claimed in recent months that information on their Facebook profiles was being duplicated to another account, which was then used to produce false information in their likeness.

Facebook’s response to this has been to introduce a profile verification system that will allow certain users to provide Facebook officials with the relevant information to allow them to indicate on their pages that they are, in fact, the real deal.

This is not a new idea, as social media rivals Twitter have used it for a number of years to verify the accounts of prominent celebrities and individuals in a number of fields.

Facebook’s use of this system doesn’t seem to be much different from Twitter’s, except for the fact that, for the moment, any attempt to have a profile verified must go through the Facebook help center.

It still remains to be seen which criteria will be used in-order to qualify as one of those lucky few who will have their accounts verified. However, it is almost certain that the only accounts to be verified belong to or are affiliated with prominent people or groups.

The verification system will however not help ease the pressure felt ordinary people and perhaps less influential celebrities or public figures that don’t make the cut.

While the verification system may help users and fans identify the official account of their favourite singer or television personality, these are not the only kinds of accounts that are causing issues, either on Facebook or on Twitter.

Maybe the future holds a system that will allow every user to willingly submit relevant information in order to verify that their accounts are legitimate, or one that will allow friends and family members to differentiate between identical accounts by more than just the optional URL identifier that Facebook currently uses.