How to spot a fake (person) online with BeehiveID

I know this may come as a shock, but: The Internet is a fakers paradise. Facebook estimates that roughly 7 percent of accounts—some 76 million—are phony. Twitter guesses 5 percent of its 200-million+ active users are bogus. (I’d lay money that both numbers are actually much higher.)

BeehiveID works by analyzing your social media accounts and assigning you a score, much like a credit score. The higher the number, the more likely you are a genuine person. You can look up your own score by visiting Beehive’s site and allowing it to connect to your Facebook account.

When I did it, I got the maximum score of 850. Turns out I’m a real boy after all. Who knew?

Beehive uses a number of techniques—including facial recognition and writing analysis—to parse thousands of data points about each person. Bots act differently online than real people, CEO Mary Haskett explained to me in a phone interview. Real people tend to have clusters of friends from both genders who live in the same town or work at the same place; fake accounts don’t. Real people tend to be more active than fakes and to write status updates and tweets in a consistent way. Real accounts also tend to produce a lot more data than bogus ones.