In a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) , Facebook said this week that as of June 30, there were 83 million fake accounts on the site, or 8.7% of the total of 955 million. Of those bogus accounts, 1.5%, or more than 14 million, were classified as "undesirable" and set up "for purposes that violate our terms of service, such as spamming."

The disclosure highlighted once again the security risks on the site for users. Spam remains a problem, as well as malicious links that download malware onto users' computers. "Fourteen million is definitely a high number," Xuxian Jiang, a security researcher at North Carolina State University, said in an interview via e-mail.

Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Security experts agree that Facebook will need to help combat the problems associated with bogus accounts. "One solution off the top of my head would be enforcing a real-identity rule for social networks, if not, at least some sort of user verification," Jiang said. "But on the other end, my uneasy concern is that it will sacrifice online privacy to some extent. A delicate balance may need to be in place."