Here’s How to Know if Someone Has Multiple Facebook Accounts

When you want to find someone on Facebook, profiles with the same or a similar name can make it tricky to figure out which is the right one.

The thing is, Facebook allows users to have up to four additional profiles under an account. Each one can have its own profile description and image with different content, interests, and friends lists.

While this facility provides greater flexibility, it can create legitimate confusion when there are several profiles with visible similarities. Sometimes, it could result in deceptive activities, too.

So, before you send a friend request, leave a comment on a post, or go through a profile to learn more about someone, it is important to know whether they have multiple accounts on Facebook and if you are looking at the correct one.

But Why Would a Person Have More Than One Facebook Account?

More often than not, people who maintain multiple profiles on Facebook have genuine reasons to do so.

A solopreneur could set up an additional account to separate their personal life from their business. Celebrities do it all the time to escape media and public intrusions and maintain privacy. Many influencers also use different FB accounts, mainly to promote each of their content niches so their followers can engage with what interests them the most.

Ordinary people can have more than one Facebook profile, too. Nowadays, this is a common practice among the younger generations as they seek to limit social activities to their closest friends.

For some people, a secondary account enables them to pursue different interests or express different sides of their personalities without being judged or shamed in public.

Of course, not everyone maintains multiple profiles for legitimate reasons. Some create fake profiles to boost engagement of their primary account. People can also do this when leading double lives—say, to cheat on their partners or to perpetrate fraudulent activities.

Find Out if Someone Has Multiple Facebook Profiles

Learning whether a person has more than one Facebook account can be useful not just for seeking clarity and avoiding confusion but also for your safety and peace of mind.

Here are practical ways to discover someone’s secondary FB accounts without them ever finding out.

Review Their Primary Facebook Account

The first place to check when you want to identify additional profiles linked to a particular person is their primary FB account. Most people who own multiple FB handles often list them under the About section. The Friends tab might also help. If some of the closest friends and family are missing from a person’s friends list, it could be a sign they are connected on another profile.

Their content and activities could provide a few clues, too. For instance, do they regularly reshare or like posts from a specific profile or actively promote another account? If so, it is possible they are trying to drive engagement for an account they own under a different name.

Use Facebook’s Search Bar

Facebook has a relatively advanced search bar that makes it easier to dig up profiles on the platform.

To use it, type the first and last name of the relevant person and hit Enter. Next, tap People on the left menu. This will separate the user profiles from the other content in the search results. You can also apply filters to find matches based on location, school, and company.

If you are unable to locate any leads with a name search, try again using a nickname, maiden name, or different spellings of the same name. You can also search with specific keywords associated with the person in question, such as the name of a personal blog, business, or brand they own.

Check Your Suggested Friends

Friend suggestions usually appear when you click the Find Friends tab on the left. You can also locate it by tapping the People icon at the top and then clicking the Suggestions tab on the left menu.

But how can this feature help you discover multiple profiles associated with an individual? It is all about the algorithms.

Facebook recommends people based on certain criteria, like similarities in interests. So, let’s say someone owns several FB profiles and, using them, adds the same friends, follows the same pages, joins the same groups, or engages with similar content as you. When they do this, there is a good chance Facebook would suggest those accounts to you as potential friends.

Run a Name Search on Google

Google’s search engine is the perfect tool to uncover information quickly from online sources.

But how can you use it? Just carry out a name search similar to how you went about with Facebook’s search bar. But Google’s algorithms are much more sophisticated. So, you can add multiple keywords at once (within quotation marks if you want to find exact matches) to improve the search results.

Remember, many people promote their FB handles on personal blogs, business websites, and other networking sites. Google can likely discover these, provided you enter the right keywords.

Look Them Up on a People Search Engine

These are specialized search tools designed to discover people records from public sources. The data they collate are pretty exhaustive and can include a person’s aliases, age, marital status, and other information besides social media accounts.

All these are sorted into usable profiles to help you retrieve them in a single report when you search for an individual by first and last name. Some platforms even allow reverse searches using an email, phone number, address, or username. But not all people search engines provide records that are accurate or up-to-date. So, choosing a reliable platform is important when you need information for decision-making.

Finally…

Often, secondary Facebook profiles are not easy to find. This is especially so when their owners keep them separate from their primary accounts for specific reasons like privacy and safety.

If names and profile pictures of an account are concealed or altered beyond recognition, you can always check the content for clues to confirm whether someone you know is behind it.

For example, similarities in content posting times and patterns, writing style, content types, and friends lists could all hint at a shared owner.

However, a person could have legitimate reasons for maintaining a hidden profile on Facebook. So, remember to respect privacy when you are digging into the social activities of others.