Yesterday, the Telegraph reported about a woman who had her identity stolen on Facebook. The strategy is simply: create another profile of a person but have inaccurate data about them in their profile. When people search for the user they end up finding a false version of their profile which can have horribly inaccurate details about them. The result was that Kerry Harvey was branded as a prostitute on a fake profile.

Then today Ryan Kissiellondon reported about a man who had a fake profile created about him on Facebook as well. The profile had his name and birth date accurate but it also had him registered to a number of gay groups. Mathew Firsht is now “suing old schoolfriend Grant Rapheal for libel and misuse of private information in what is believed to be the first defamation case involving Facebook in the UK.”

These are not the first cases of users having false duplicates of their profile created. In a video posted on College Humor. back in March, this trick was the brunt of a joke movie trailer. This leads to the question of whether or not Facebook should be verifying user profiles when a user registers. As of now there isn’t much of a verification process but perhaps we will start seeing new processes implemented in the future.

Facebook is getting rid of network pages soon- the pages that appear for specific networks (ie Dallas/Fort Worth). It eliminates your being able to target a specific market to advertise a product or service. You don’t get to connect with the people within your network as easily. So promote and enjoy this feature while it lasts.

Facebook used to have a valuation on $15 billion based on Microsoft’s investment in the company. According to Mike Arrington the new valuation is probably in the $3 - $4 billion range. According to Arrington and now Peter Kafka at Silicon Alley Insider has reported similar rumors.

One financial wealth manager is looking to unload some shares and apparently some Facebook employees are also looking to sell shares. From the sounds of it, some shareholders have enough shares that they’d be satisfied exiting now. These rumors also may make a potential acquisition more attractive to a large company. Mark Zuckerberg isn’t looking to sell though according to other sources.

While Facebook’s current cash flow doesn’t justify a $15 billion valuation, the launch of their platform payment system could easily justify a higher valuation. Do you think Facebook’s new payment system will help boost their cash flow substantially overnight?