Crackdowns on Social Media Accounts Backfire by Driving up Demand

Facebook shut down as many as 30,000 fake accounts in the past week — but that’s unlikely to hurt the multi-million-dollar spam industry. … “If you go to the underground markets where they sell fake Facebook accounts, you can buy 1,000 of these for $300 to $400,” Damon McCoy, a New York University [Tandon School of Engineering] computer science professor specializing in cybercrime, told NBC News. “In terms of economics of replacing these 30,000 accounts, they took down something, but perhaps not as much as you might think.”