Why isn’t Facebook’s software smart enough to add “you already have a friend with the same name” to scam friend requests?

One popular fraud technique on Facebook:

  • copy some public elements from a profile, e.g., Mahmud Mohammed Ahmed’s
  • create a fake account with the same name and profile image
  • make friend requests of the people who are friends with the real Mahmud Mohammed Ahmed

Quite a few people seem to accept these fake friend requests, not checking to see if they are already friends with Mahmud Mohammed Ahmed. Why isn’t the Facebook software so say “This may be from a fake account; you’re already friends with someone named Mahmud Mohammed Ahmed” and display the profile pictures side by side?

Speaking of profile pictures, why isn’t the Facebook fraud software smart enough to check new accounts to see if anyone by the same name has exactly the same profile images? Maybe there are multiple Mahmud Mohammed Ahmeds out of 8 billion humans, but what are the odds that they look exactly the same and have chosen to dress and pose in the same way for a photo?

It looks as though approximately 10 percent of people will fall for the above scam. Here’s a request from a month ago:

Here’s the real person:

The scammer got 35 friends out of 299.

It’s the third night of Kwanzaa. What do we find on Facebook? A “Professor at … Professor” who purportedly lives in Maryland, but whose profile image seems to be Prof. Prof. Dr. Dr. Maulana Karenga, Ph.D., Ph.D.‘s.

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