Let me just briefly explain what a Twitter Fake is, for those not in the know...

If you are a Twitter user, then you have a Twitter account (from which to post tweets, obviously). Anyone can have a Twitter account (some have many) - all you have to do is sign up, provide an email address (and a password) and you're away! You make up your twitter name when you create your account - which can be anything (within reason, there's a character limit etc).

A Twitter Fake then, is someone who creates a Twitter account in the name of another user (usually a celebrity) and then proceeds to post tweets as that celebrity or user.

Now some of us (me included) would call that fraud.

Let's be clear about this though. This is not the case where someone creates a Twitter user in the name of a TV or Film character (for example "Captain Kirk"), as this is a character from a TV show - and usually the twitter user posts tweets in the style of the character - that's normally quite amusing and there is no harm done. The name is quite clearly the name of a character and not a real person.

However, when a twitter user creates an account in the name of a celebrity - and starts to post tweets purporting to be that celebrity - then that's a "Twitter Fake" and it's fraud.
As I've mentioned, posting as a character can be quite witty and amusing - I personally follow quite a few of them - but what is the point of imitating a real person on Twitter?

Unlike credit card fraud, where somebody steals your credit or debit card then impersonates you whilst shopping (and therefore taking home several items of value "for free"), there is absolutely nothing to gain. Apart, I suppose from a certain amount of satisfaction at duping several users - in some cases several thousand users - into thinking that you are a celebrity.

There have been several cases recently - most noticeable for me as I am a True Blood fan - of Twitter users posing as True Blood celebrities. Some of these accounts are indeed still active (and they swear they are not fakes!!) and have thousands of followers. Amusingly, one is even quite indignant that they are being branded as a fake.....but the account still exists.

Unfortunately, there is no easy way to get rid of them either. There is a process in Twitter whereby you can report people for spam or for possible misuse, however you do need to have hard evidence before you report somebody for this kind of misuse (i.e. impersonating a celebrity). Just because you think somebody is impersonating a celebrity is not good enough (obviously) and therefore us "mere mortals" have to rely on the good nature and willingness of other real celebrities and high profile fan-bases that actually know these people (or can contact their agents) to get them removed from Twitter.

I briefly mentioned before - it is a complete mystery to me why these people impersonate celebrities on Twitter. It begs the question; what possible gain can there be? There is no financial gain, there is only a limited boasting gain (there are only so many of your friends that you can boast to, after all) so why do it? Is it some sort of attention seeking disorder that these people suffer from, or are they just idiots? I don't know.

From what I can gather there are some Twitter users that enjoy this sort of thing and revel in the fact that they've been gushing to some fake celebrity, that in reality is probably some 48 year old fat attention-seeking pervert that they "love their work". Hmm.

What I do know is that it doesn't make Twitter a very inviting place to be. The whole point of the microblogging universe is to connect with people that you wouldn't normally get the opportunity to otherwise. To me it's brilliant that I can read a major celebrity's tweets and even (in some cases) hold a conversation with them, or at least get a reply - that to me is the draw of Twitter.

This, however is not a new problem. Twitter Fakes (as any other fakes) have been around for a long time and to assist the elimination, Twitter has a verification system that makes the right connections and provides us - the Twitter user - with a guarantee that the user you're following isn't a fake. But this process is not an easy process. Even according to the Twitter website, it can take many weeks for a celebrity or well-known person to be verified. This does not endear the new Twitter-Celeb towards Twitter!

It is a sad fact of life that these imposters exist - and it is an even sadder fact that the amount of fraudsters is on the increase.

Of course an increase means that some celebrities (especially the targeted ones) have to jump through what must seem like interminable hoops to get verified, just so that they can say hello to their fans. It's therefore no wonder that some don't and I think that's a shame.

Whilst you're pondering on this, spare a thought for the people that take the time and care enough to report these fakes. They are actually doing us (the fans) a big favour by doing so, just think of how pissed off are you gonna be when you discover that your favourite celebrity and idol is actually some sad little twat on a computer?