83 million Fb are fake.

Eighty-three million Facebook accounts are fake

FAKES: An estimated 83 million Facebook accounts are fake. - AFP/Relaxnews 2012

According to the latest figures released by Facebook in a filing for the US Securities and Exchange Commission, around 83 million Facebook accounts are fake.

In a report released this week, Facebook estimates that around 8.7% of accounts belonging to its 955 million monthly active users (MAUs) are fake or bogus.

According to Facebook, this figure breaks down as 4.8% duplicate accounts, 2.4% what the social network terms "user-misclassified accounts" and a further 1.5% spam or "undesirable accounts."

These figures lower Facebook's number of MAUs to around 872 million; in comparison Twitter's number of users was estimated to be around 517 million (including spam accounts) in a July 30 report by Semiocast.