World

Facebook says there may be as many as 83 million false or duplicate accounts on its website.

The company said in a regulatory filing this week that 8.7 per cent of its 955 million monthly active users may be duplicate or false accounts.

In May it estimated that 5 to 6 per cent were such accounts.

Facebook Inc. said that about 4.8 per cent of its active user accounts may have been duplicates as of June 30, while misclassified accounts likely represented about 2.4 per cent of the total.

These are accounts for pets or businesses that people set up as they would set up a human user's profile.

Accounts that Facebook terms "undesirable," such as those used for spamming, represent about 1.5 per cent of the total.