A single 40 something lady – How I uncovered the fake men of Facebook

As a lady in her 40s I use Facebook on a regular basis to keep up to date with my friends and what’s going on in the world. I have the average number of friends on Facebook of around 250, yet some of my girlfriends have maybe 1000 or more. The difference is that because I work in IT I am quite security conscious and my Facebook is locked down and I only accept friends that I actually know. This consists of people I have worked with or met over the years and old school, college and Uni friends.

My single girlfriends often show me their Facebook and laugh and joke about how many random messages they get from men, and the pictures they get sent ! One of my friends was talking to a guy and it turned out he had a girlfriend already and was using a different account to message her and other girls via. This is not something new, and many women reading this will have come across this problem before.

So just over 6 months ago I decided to start an experiment and setup a new Facebook account in a different name and location and like my friends, not lock it down so people can find me and add me, of cause as part of this I set my status as “Single” and I ensured I posted at least once a day with things that indicated I was single, such as going for a walk on my own with my dog and a few nice photo poses etc.

Soon enough just like my girlfriends said the friend requests started to come in and probably 95% were male. My aim was to get at least 1000 friends and then stop accepting any more, and just after 4 months I hit that target, I did not go looking for them they all came to me. During this experiment I only ever received inbox messages from men and many started off with hello or hi and normal chats, which I went along with, but gave fake details to protect my identity and location, some messages were a bit more forward and saying how much they loved me and wanted to date or marry me, even though they didn’t know me. And as expected I received the random d**k pictures that all us girls cringe about when we get them.

My aim was not to trap or catch people but to see if people were who they said they were, and for this reason I am not naming any individuals I spoke to under my Facebook alias name. Because I work in IT and have worked in cyber forensics I know how to look for people online and I can spot a “double account” a mile away, these are the men who have a separate account just to chat up and date women.

I analysed all the accounts that I interacted with and the facts are below –

Men age 45 plus – These individuals tended to communicate via their own Facebook account, they were often single and had family and work colleagues on their friends list, only 20% of those I communicated with in this age range were found to be using a second account.

Men age 30 to 45 – A massive 55% of the individuals I communicated with in this age range I was able to trace that they were using a second account to contact me and other women via. Some were very easy to spot as they have almost all female friends, and no male friends, the people who comment on their posts don’t really appear to know them. Typically if your this age you have family, friends, school and work colleagues on your Facebook, many did not have a single one.

Men age 20 to 30 – Given that I am 40ish this didn’t stop this age range from contacting me. A massive 35% of the individuals I communicated with in this age range I was able to trace that they were using a second account to contact me and other women via. As before some were very easy to spot as they have almost all female friends, and no male friends, the people who comment on their posts don’t really appear to know them. Typically if your this age you have family, friends, school and work colleagues on your Facebook, many did not.

So of the ones I was able to trace that were using a second account you may ask who really are they ? I was able to trace and verify around 70% of the accounts some were very easy as they were using their real name and the same pictures as their other main profile. Some were using an abbreviation of their real name, so for example if their real name was John Smith they were calling themselves Jonathan Smithson or similar. Another subset used a totally different name and location to hide who they really were, this subset of individuals were the ones that were often more pushy in chats to meet up and sent explicit photos of themselves as they assumed they could not be traced back to their real identities, as you might guess almost all of these individuals were either married or in a relationship but claimed to be single.

During this experiment I was never the one to ask to meet and I never shared any explicit photos of myself. During the 6 months period 34 individual men expressed an interest to meet me, of those 34 people 26 of the requests were made in private chats and 8 were made on posts on my page. I was able to positively 100% identify the identity of 28 of the 34 men. Yes there was 6 who I could not trace as been who they said they were or I was unable to obtain enough information to confirm any searches.

So from the 28 I could identify how many do you think were actually single ?, well this was a bit harder to research. There was 11 who were obviously using their own accounts as they had the typical family, friends and work colleagues commenting on their posts and their status was set as single and they often posted things that indicated they were single. There was 3 who were using their own accounts and it was clear that they were in a relationship and wanted fun with me and were not afraid to hide that fact.

So that takes us up to 14 what about the other 14 you may ask, well they were second accounts, and 8 of them were married and 3 were in a relationship, and the other 3 had a second account and based on their main account I could not be 100% sure if they were in a relationship or not – why have a second account if your single ? This a a shocking result when you think about it, these are the type of people who my girlfriends are talking to day in day out and they think are their friends even though they don’t actually know who they are.

During this 6 month period I did receive a total of 11 images that I would class as sexually explicit, and 2 videos again explicit.

I showed the results to my friends and they were shocked, they were adamant that the people they had on their Facebook were not like my results, even though they didn’t 100% know many of the people they called friends. It’s really creepy when I see comments on my fake profile, and my girlfriends ones where these men who we don’t know are publicly stating that they love us and how attractive they find us. Yes its nice to hear such comments, and at times it can bring a smile to your face if a man you bump into in a shop comments how nice you look and then walks off, you know he was probably genuine and you will never see him again. But on Facebook you have the same individuals day in and day out posting love harts and saying they love you on your page or in a message when they don’t know you at all, even offers of marriage !, are you not supposed to ask someone out, date them etc before saying you love them!

If I was to post “I’m not feeling very well today think i’ll stay in bed” i would get some comments like “Hope your better soon” or “Yes good idea you feel better later” and to me that’s fine, I don’t mind that even from someone I don’t know, but it gets creepy when you get things like “If I was there then you would be in bed all day !” or even worse that I cant repeat on here that would be set to my inbox, I’m sure you women can guess what many said.

What to look out for

How can you tell if someone is who they say they are and this is their own genuine account ? Here is a few top tips, and most of these should apply to a genuine account.

• Do they have “family” members as friends, typically they may be tagged in photos or posts with family where they are commenting on the photo or post and some of the people will share the same surname or call people by names such as Aunty, Uncle etc etc. Scroll down there posts and have a look.
• Do they have “work friends” as friends, again they maybe tagged in photos at work or nights out and comment or joke about things related to their work and its easy to see that these people work together. Scroll down there posts and have a look.
• Do they have “close friends” as friends, we all have friends who we see on a regular basis. You might see them in posts on nights out or talking about going the football next weekend or related to their hobbies or interests.
• Do the people who comment on their posts seem like they know them ? As above most people have family, friends and work colleagues past and present so you expect to see comments from people who know them, if not this could be a red flag.
• Do the things they post indicate they are targeted towards certain people ? Sometimes the things people post can be a red flag and indicate they are trying to target a certain type of person – for example single women.

So as an ending note to this social experiment I have now closed my alias account down. Many of my girlfriends have now also locked their Facebook profile and only accept friend requests from people they actually know, and they have started to clear out the ones they don’t know. And yes they asked me to “verify” some of the people they have been talking to, and would you believe it that many of them are second accounts ! now there is a surprise, not.

I really wanted to balance this test and compare men to women, and this may happen in a future experiment. I discussed this with a few male friends who I know are single and have open Facebook accounts and accept friend requests from women. They don’t seem to suffer from the same issues us women do, they do get women adding them as friends, but no where near as many as I got (yes they are good looking guys also) very few inbox messages and a low number of comments on posts. None of them had ever received random sexually explicit images and they didn’t know any other guys who had either. It was interesting to hear that they did know of other men who had a second account on Facebook.

Some of the women I have spoken to over the years have told me they have a second Facebook account and their reasons for having it ranged from they wanted to check up on other girlfriends who they didn’t speak to, we all know them type ! or they wanted to check up on their partners by messaging them under a different name to see if they would cheat ! well I guess some women are like that.

Let me know your thoughts ?