Social media giant Facebook has revealed that up 270 million accounts on its platform – up 6% from previous estimates – are fake, The Telegraph reported. The numbers were mentioned in the company’s third-quarter earnings report.

The development comes at a time the tech giant is under scrutiny for failing to stop Russia’s alleged meddling in the United States presidential election in 2016.

The company said the higher number of fake users is not sudden, but is a result of the improvements in its methods to identify fake accounts.

These fake accounts include those of businesses and organisations that were mistakenly set up as personal profiles instead of pages, as well as accounts that were deliberately created to spam other users, The Telegraph reported.