In a post from last year, Setting Up Your Facebook Page, I explained how important it is to think up front about whether to set up your fan page attached to your personal profile or as a separate identity. I mentioned you could also set up a separate "personal" profile and, as an aside, said:
I should also point out that having two individual profiles is a violation of Facebook's Terms of Service as well.
Last week, reader Andrew wrote to me asking where that information appeared in the Terms of Service because he couldn't find it. And, sure enough, when I went back and looked myself, it no longer seems to be there. I was starting to wonder if maybe I'd imagined it in the first place, but when I did a search on their Help files (which never seem to get updated), I found this entry about Pages, which states:
Maintaining multiple accounts, regardless of the purpose, is a violation of Facebook’s Terms of Use. If you already have a personal account, then we cannot allow you to create business accounts for any reason. You can manage all the Pages and Socials Ads that you create on your personal account.
So that confirms it was once there. The current terms are dated December 21, 2009, but I suspect this change happened in November, when they released a new Statement of Rights and Responsibilities in response to a number of complaints from users, media reports, and an investigation by the Canadian government about privacy protection and ownership of content.
So it definitely appears that there's no problem having multiple accounts now (I hesitate to say anything conclusively when it comes to Facebook...), which is good for people who don't want to attach their fan pages to their personal accounts, but felt they had to "just in case."
If anybody knows anything different regarding this, please let me know and I'll update the post.
Thanks, Andrew, for bringing this to my attention!
Posted in Facebook,Privacy/Security,Social Media,Updates
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
My facebook account was hacked into! I can no longer log on! Ive asked facebook for help, but……so far nothing! If they never respond could I create another acct w/o being banned?
You should be able to, I think. I hate to say anything definitively with regards to Facebook, because they’re always changing things. But you’ll probably need to use a different email address than the one you used on your hacked account.
It’s here:
http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=721
Under: If I already have a user profile, can I create a business account?
Terms of Service (revised October 4, 2010) says
In section 4.2 :- “You will not create more than one personal profile.”
Whatever the help pages say to the contrary, this suggests that it is permissible to have a personal account *and* a business account.
Just gonna comment and say – i got a “REstore account” link today which said if i have multiple accounts one has to be deleted and to resotre one or the other i have to choose which one to delete
I don’t see how they would know, many families use the same computer in a home and each person could have their own account. What about people signing in from a public access computer where 100s of people could sign in each day. There’s just no real way to verify someone is using multiple accounts or that several people are using the same machine. I think when website have these sort of rules (along with age limits) its to cover themselves legally, not because they really care or have any way to verify what people say. And if the person isn’t spamming and has one for personal use and one for general use, I don’t see the harm or why they’d care honestly.
I generally agree, Mandy. But I have heard of cases of people having their accounts disabled suddenly (not recently), so I just want people to be aware of what COULD happen. Like you, I think the risk of any problem is very low unless you’re abusing the system.
I think multiple accounts are the best way to separate work life and personal life, stage( if you DJ, play in a band, or otherwise perform ) identity from personal identity. You might play superman on television and are more Clark Kent in everyday life, but your fans will want to connect to your TV persona, and people who know the ‘real’ you will want to connect to you as well.
Keeping these personas separate while using a single account would be more than daunting.
It,s now under “How do I create a business account?” On the page Ann linked last year, in no uncertain terms:
” Please be aware that managing multiple accounts is a serious violation of Facebook’s Terms of Use. If we determine that an individual has more than one account, we reserve the right to terminate all of their accounts.”
Thanks for the info!
I was looking for this info and thanks for the update, Arno! So, FB still prohibit user to have more than 1 account.
Ben, they may prohibit it, but I know people with as many as 6 FB accounts, all active. My recommendation would be to make the extra accounts and let the chips fall where they may.
They may threaten to cancel the accounts, but I can’t see how they would know or be able to maintain it. There is no 100% way to keep someone off a website if they want to use it bad enough and have access to other computers (like a library, etc).
I play the online games and you often have to have several friends playing with you to move up, so I added “my own friends” so I could progress. And as someone else stated, it serves the purpose of being able to speak/act freely without any repercussions/awkwardness from people you may know in real life.
My theory is that if you get over 1000 friends they do the whole security check thing on you. I got lucky, guessed the pictures right and was able to delete about 400 “friends” off my list, since then I’ve had no problems. My other accounts have never been flagged by FB because I dont use em as much and have very few “friends” on them.
Also all you need is an email address (free under yahoo, msn, etc), as many as you want, and make up some real sounding personal info and FB doesn’t bat an eyelash about it as long as it appears realistic and you dont start spamming and adding 100 strangers all at once.
Play it cool and you easily fall under the FB radar. There is no way they will know unless you make yourself stand out somehow. Advice: Don’t use pics of someone famous or anyone else people are likely to know. IF they do, then quickly change the pic in case they do report it to FB, by the time FB looks into it, the pic will be gone/changed and the reporter looks like a fool.
Worst case is you have to start over with a new profile, which sucks, but know they can’t totally block you from the site, just from the profile you were using. Play safe and play smart, people :)
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