For new students joining Imperial College each year, the various Facebook groups for halls, subjects, and for the entire year of Freshers as a whole are an invaluable resource, both for specific questions and getting to know your future class/house/roommates (delete as appropriate). Unfortunately, full as they are of new students, many of whom are arriving in London for the first time, these groups are always a prime target for advertisers and promoters, pushing their own events through links and the odd fake account.

This year, though, they’ve gone one step further in creating fake Facebook groups for 2012⁄13 Freshers, for each hall of residence and even a fake event for Freshers’ Week. It’s not clear whether these fake groups were intended just for advertising purposes or to try and collect personal information on new students.

A company filing in August found that 1.5% of all Facebook accounts, roughly 14.3 million, are “undesirable”; fake accounts intended for spamming or phishing schemes.

All fake groups and events have now been taken down after the Union contacted Facebook. Asked about the incident, Union President Paul Beaumont said: “It’s no wonder that new students can start Uni incredibly confused, when they’ve been a part of fake groups mis-selling things, or been told false information by fake profiles. New students should be very wary of groups and profiles that are promoting events, encouraging people to sign up to mailing lists, or encouraging people to part with money. All of the official and proper Facebook “sub-groups” (faculty, departmental, or hall specific) are linked from the Union’s Freshers’ group. All major websites and such will be linked from the Union’s website imperialcollegeunion.org.”

(Union freshers’ group can be found at: http://www.facebook.com/groups/197209050356534/.)