Underage hopefuls are taking to Facebook to find fake IDs

Fake IDs are often proffered by big brothers and beer-swilling teammates, passed down by circumstance and word of mouth. But teenagers without easy connections to false identification aren’t letting their lack of lax siblings stand in the way of surreptitiously purchased booze. They’re using social media to snag ID cards and gain entrance to bars and access to beers. In Australia, police have discovered teenagers propositioning strangers of legal age to sell their identification. 

“Some teens have resorted to trawling through Facebook profiles, finding someone who looks the same and propositioning them for their IDs and paying them money,” Commander Adrian White told the Brisbane Times. The police noted that fake IDs incidents have nearly doubled in the last year in Victoria. It’s not clear how many of those IDs came from soliciting random people on Facebook — it’s hard to imagine anyone with a lick of common sense agreeing to sell their ID to a strange and obviously reckless teenager, let alone enough people acquiescing to cause a veritable fake ID surge. But it is a contributing factor to the rise of false identification in Australia. 

Facebook isn’t the only place underage people seek out fake IDs online; marketplaces like the Silk Road have a special section for forged documents, and a quick Reddit search can pull up users looking on the Silk Road forum for the best IDs out there. 

A glance at Twitter confirms that teenagers are also soliciting fake IDs through the micro-blogging site (and doing a really terrible job at being discreet): 

Does anybody have a fake ID i can borrow ?!

— Taylor. (@TaylorVLandry) November 11, 2013

There’s also vendors offering fake IDs for sale on Twitter, although I suspect they’re not particularly reliable (and by that I mean they’re probably scammers):

Buy fake passport, drivers license , id cards , visas for sale online. – Los Angeles: We are the best producer… http://t.co/yavU21j6dh

— Share (@ShiningStuff) March 16, 2013

original high-quality fake passports, driver’s licenses, identity cards, visas: BUY FAKE PASSPORTS,BUY FAKE ID… http://t.co/2YjtsF3C6O

— Touchington Arcade (@TAForums) March 14, 2013

While things like face recognition technology and Graph Search have made it easier than ever to find your potential doppelganger (or you know, close enough) and connect, there are still plenty of barriers between underage hopefuls and the bar. It’s called the bouncer, and unless you did some really good sleuthing and found your match, it’ll be just as hard as ever to slip one past these guys. 

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