Who keeps cloning my Father in Law?

[Fonzey]

Father in Law has been facebooking the last couple of years, he's fairly active on it but the last few months all of his friends will occasionally receive a friends request apparently originating from his account, same name/profile picture/etc but if you try to explore the "new" profile there's generally no content on it.

I've reported the last couple as duplicate accounts and as far as we can tell, no harm currently being done but if this is something malicious - what could the end-goal be and what measures should he be taking if any?

Slight development this morning as one of these duplicate accounts has sent my Brother in Law a message request with a generic "Hello how have you been..." type message.

Is this some kind of long-con under way that could culminate into something a bit more sinister?

[Fonzey]

Cheers for the replies.

It is a little frustrating as there doesn't seem to be much that he can do himself to report the issues - as he never receives messages/requests from these bogus account(s). We're just advising people to keep reporting it for now.

I took a look at his privacy settings over the weekend and prevented public visibility of his friends list - so that should at least stifle it in the future as the dummy accounts won't be able to 'reach out' to his friends list in bulk.

I've suggested he posts on less generic stuff, as that's getting his name/profile into the public domain and keep more to posting on family/friends matters... but I don't think that advice has taken hold...