How to Create a Fake Facebook Account
Back in the day, creating multiple Facebook accounts was easy. You may need an additional email address from a legitimate school, but it is generally easy to obtain, especially if you receive a new “alumni” email address tied to your university domain after graduation.
Nowadays, if you try to create a new Facebook account, you will have to jump over a lot more obstacles due to the mechanisms that Facebook uses to prevent people from violating its Terms of Service. Why do you need another Facebook account at all? First of all, “delete Facebook!” Kinja commenters have written a lot in this article, in fact there are several good reasons why you might want “Fakebook”.
Stop being real on Facebook
The first and most obvious reason is that a fake account allows you to disassociate yourself from the information that Facebook holds about you. Of course, deleting your Facebook account and starting a new job can work too, if you can do it at all. I’ll admit, I’ve never tried deleting my account right away and see if I can create a new one with the same email address and phone number. Knowing Facebook, I suspect this is probably very difficult , if not impossible.
You won’t be able to avoid all the different ways that Facebook will know who you are if you use a bogus account, including what you use to browse the site and where you are, but you can at least separate key identifiers from Facebook. understand. These include your real email address, phone number, relationships, contacts, who you are talking to, interests, etc.
Get rid of Facebook distractions (and annoyances)
With a Fakebook account, you can control exactly what you see in your feed. You will no longer be turned on by the stupidity of your friends’ political opinions, and you will not have to look at endless streams of photos of pets and / or updates about newborns. Since you won’t be budding anyone on your fake account, you can turn it into a kind of RSS reader for other organizations you want to know about: when your favorite group announces their next tour, when a particular creator releases a new set of Dungeons & Dragons dice, or when there is a sale at a specific local store.
Use Facebook hardware
I’m sure you’ve already read about Facebook ‘s Byzantine regulations for Oculus hardware. If not, here’s the short version: you’ll need to link your Facebook account to the VR headset in order to use it. Yes, this is a completely absurd policy, but for Oculus, this is the new norm.
Of course, this also means that you cannot link your Oculus headset to a Facebook account and then delete that account when you are no longer interested in having a social media profile. Do this and you will lose all the apps you bought for your headset and you will no longer be able to buy them. If your Facebook account is ever deleted by Facebook for violating the Terms of Service , your Oculus headset will suffer the same fate.
But at least now you can use multiple headsets with one Facebook account and not get banned. Sigh.
How do I create another Facebook account?
Here’s the tricky part. Facebook is much better at verifying your account these days, and if it suspects you are up to something, it won’t let you create an additional account. What I mean? Well, let’s walk through the process.
Since we’re trying to be super-anonymous, I started by opening an incognito window in my browser. Before we get started, one quick note: I don’t pass my traffic through the VPN to further separate my real IP address from Facebook. It’s not a bad idea, but I suspect Facebook also knows quite a few VPN IP ranges, which makes this a moot point.
Facebook asks you for the usual detailed list of parts. I would advise you to use a different name, email address and date of birth than the ones you use for your real Facebook account. Don’t use a phone number. Sounds prudent, right? You will then be sent a code to verify your email:
If you’re lucky, that’s it! That’s all you need to do to get your new account up and running. However, it is also possible that Facebook may request additional verification that you are who you are before it lets you play out on its service, which could include uploading a head shot to confirm that you are a real person. Presumably Facebook is running this through its facial identification tools, and if the company decides that the said image is already linked to another Facebook account, you’re out of luck.
What I mean? I don’t work for Facebook, but I can only assume that the company’s tool is looking for knowingly fake images – for example, trying to trick Facebook that the image of Sylvester Stallone is actually you – or trying to match your image with multiple images from any other account on the service. So, if you try to beat the system using a friend’s photo, but Facebook already has a lot of that person’s face images linked to another account, you’re out of luck.
You have an additional Facebook account. Now what?
As I mentioned, Facebook is pretty good at creating profiles of who you are based on all kinds of information that you might not even know you provide to the company. Case in point: even in an incognito browser window that shouldn’t be able to access anything else, which I do in my regular browser, Facebook still knew that there was some kind of correlation between my secondary account and my primary account. As a result, I was asked to befriend some of the friends of my main account – which would not have been possible if it were a truly new account created on “anonymity” – and had very specific suggestions for me about how I might want fill in the initial details of your profile.
If that hasn’t already made your hair reel, it should. Because if you use a secondary Facebook account, you need to be absurdly diligent to keep your life as divided between the two as possible. If Facebook creates an association that you are fake, it will most likely block the fake account and possibly take action against your real one.
What does it mean? Well, put on your tinfoil hat. If I was using a fake Facebook account, I would create it like this:
- I would link this fake account to a device that I have never used to interact with Facebook before, such as an old smartphone.
- I would turn on the VPN whenever I access Facebook on this device (and you can’t go wrong, otherwise Facebook will start to realize that you are accessing the account from the same location as your regular Facebook account)
- Just in case, I would choose a VPN server near where I usually live. (All we care about is a different IP address.)
- I would have nothing on my fake Facebook account, what else would I do on my real one. Don’t be friends with yourself. Don’t be friends with your friends. Do not associate identifying information – for example, the same phone number – with two accounts.
- I would disable any features or services in my Fakebook account that I knew I would not be using. This includes the ability for everyone to see you are online, tag you in any photos without your permission, send you friend requests, or even search for who you are based on other identifying information such as your email address or phone number. … Basically, the goal is to remove, disable or interfere with as many of Facebook’s normal social features as possible.
- I would not associate this Facebook account with any other service. Don’t use it for anything. Do not play games on it. Don’t do anything about it. This is a renowned RSS reader; nothing more.
- I would “use” the account in the sense that I could populate the profile with reasonable, albeit bogus, information so it doesn’t look like spam. But please don’t upload your photo to your fake account. Don’t download anything.
Basically, let’s say your new Facebook account could disappear at any time . As part of this, I would advise not to connect to your new VR headset if you are actively using a different primary Facebook account. The risk seems too great to me. You don’t want to lose access to all the games you paid for if or when Facebook figures out your little scheme.
I think you can be a little more liberal with your new account if you have previously deleted your old main Facebook account. I can’t imagine Facebook being very worried about this, but this is just my guess. Also, if you log out of Facebook one day, why would you need to create a new profile again? Just activate the old one and delete friends, groups, associations or whatever you need to shorten it however you want. As annoying as it is, at least you don’t have to worry about Facebook suddenly deleting both accounts one day.