Catfishing Is Bigger Than You Might Think, Study Reveals Tricks Used By Fraudsters

After the Manti Te’o scandal broke and the show catfishing debuted the idea of fake user accounts on social networks and dating websites jumped into the public spotlight.

In response to the catfishing accounts that are now being exposed the team at My Life examined the world of faked user accounts to determine how prevalent the practice of catfishing has become.

According to the study 83 million Facebook accounts are faked or duplicate in nature. Not only are those accounts fake but the average catfish will use 136 tags per ever four photos, while real users choose just one tag per four photos.

The study also found that catfish accounts have 726 friends on average while real users have just 130.

My Life also discovered that while 40 percent of Facebook’s users are female, 97 percent of catfishing accounts claim to be female.

Sadly the study found that catfishers will use traumatic experiences such as cancer, accidents and death to avoid meeting their victims in real life.

For future details about the facts of catfishing check out the infographic below: