Facebook API - When user created Facebook account?

Question

I have a website which uses Facebook connect for user accounts. I\'m having some problems with spam, though.

I\'d like to restrict Facebook login from any Facebook a

Answer 1

Facebook API doesn't provide the signup date...

You can, however find out if the user has verified their email address. Something that many bots/spammers don't really do.

Using the Graph API...a call such as this will return the "verified" field (either TRUE or FALSE):

https://graph.facebook.com/me/?access_token=&fields=verified

Answer 2

One of the best solutions I found on a similar thread was to find when the earliest profile picture was posted. Traversing through posts (status updates, timeline posts, activity) is tedious and too costly but given the relatively lower number of profile pictures, traversing though profile pictures is a good way to go. Most users would likely post a profile picture within a week of creating their account (if not the very same day) provided they are active users. This gives you a rough idea about the actual account creation date.

Or why not just use Profile Pictures album? Once you can get access to "Profile Pictures" album, you might be able to use created_time field for the album (or sort Profile Pictures by created_time for individual photos).

Even if the earliest photo was deleted, what are the chances that the user stays without any profile picture for a long time?

Reference: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/reference/v2.0/album

See: Facebook API: Get all profile pictures for help with getting profile pictures of a user.

Answer 3

Calling the Facebook API is a (relatively) slow operation; especially if you have to call it multiple times. So, when possible, it is a good idea to get the information you need, without making API calls.

You may take a look at http://metadatascience.com/2013/03/11/inferring-facebook-account-creation-date-from-facebook-user-id/. It explains how to figure out the creation date of a Facebook account without having to call the Facebook API, just based on the user’s Facebook UID. You can also download here the lookup table showing the correlation between Facebook UID and Facebook Account Creation Date.