Since the beginning of the year, Facebook deleted 5.4 billion fake accounts, the company announced.

“We have improved our ability to detect and block attempts to create fake, abusive accounts,” the internet firm said in its latest transparency report.

“We can estimate that every day, we prevent millions of attempts to create fake accounts using these detection systems.”, AFP quoted the internet giant.

By fake account, a company means an attempt by a person or a group of people to present themselves for what they are not or for a person who does not exist.

According to Facebook, about 5 percent of its worldwide month active users during the second and third quarters of this year fall into the "fake" category.

The social network invests a lot of money opening and deleting accounts designed to mislead users, especially on political and social issues.

The detailed report also showed that government demands for user information hit a new high, led by the US, The Citizen reported.

The most requests were made by the United States, followed by India, the United Kingdom, Germany and France.

Washington alone has made 50 741 requests for 82 461 Facebook profiles. More than two-thirds of these requests for information done in a way prohibiting the social network from letting users know about inquiries, the report showed.

“We always scrutinize every government request we receive for account data to make sure it is legally valid,” Facebook deputy general counsel Chris Sonderby said in an online post about the latest figures.

“This is true no matter which government makes the request.”, Facebook said.

The company says they have closed a huge number of profiles that spread or glorify terrorism, suicide, child pornography and drug sales.

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