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Tag: fake accounts

  • Instagram Has a Bot Problem, Despite ‘Purge’, Say Researchers

    After looking at over 10.2 million accounts and studying the behavior of 20,000 purchased fake accounts, some Italian researchers have concluded that Instagram still has a bot problem.

    How bad is it? According to security researcher Andrea Stroppa, it’s not great. He says that up to 8 percent of Instagram’s over 300 million users are bots.

    This, despite a concerted effort on Instagram’s part to purge such accounts from the network.

    This past December, Instagram announced an effort to get rid of “fake and spammy accounts.”

    “As more people join, keeping Instagram authentic is critical—it’s a place where real people share real moments. We’re committed to doing everything possible to keep Instagram free from the fake and spammy accounts that plague much of the web, and that’s why we’re finishing up some important work that began earlier this year. We’ve been deactivating spammy accounts from Instagram on an ongoing basis to improve your experience. As part of this effort, we will be deleting these accounts forever, so they will no longer be included in follower counts. This means that some of you will see a change in your follower count,” said Instagram at the time.

    The purge hit many celebrity accounts the hardest, with popular users like Beyonce and Kim Kardashian losing up to 7% of their followers.

    “Despite that last December purge and new ‘countermeasures’ to curb this trend, there is still a lack of transparency about internal data and very few analysis on the actual presence of spam­bots, especially on Instagram. Now that ‘anybody can advertise on the platform,’ and the company is set to ‘become a real business,’ it is crucial to create a level playing field for everybody – and also to show more respect for users that flock social media platforms,” reads the report.

    Social networks with bot problems could also, unsurprisingly, face ad problems. Marketers want to know that they are paying for real eyes, not a bot’s. That’s why you’ve seen social networks like Facebook and Twitter downplay their fake account problems for some time.

    The research also found that 19.8 percent of the accounts analyzed never posted, 10% only posted once in a month, about half of the accounts had fewer than five posts.

    The report claims that 30% of users are “inactive”, meaning one or zero posts in a month. Instagram disputes this, saying “active” means logging on. Instagram has a point here, as plenty of users like looking at Instagram without actually posting themselves.

    Just like Facebook, Instagram uses automated and manual measures to curb the bot problem. But as long as it’s super easy (and it most certainly is) to buy and sell fake accounts and likes, this will continue to be a problem.

  • Florida Man Used Fake Facebook Accounts to Lure Minors for Sex, Brought Baby Along for Meetup

    A Florida Man is facing charges of unlawful sexual activity with a minor after police say he used Facebook to convince underage girls to meet him for sex.

    The scheme was a bit more elaborate than just contacting young girls on Facebook and making a pass. 44-year-old Tadd Link Clukey reportedly created multiple fake profiles on the social network, posing as young, attractive girls with names like ‘Amanda Panzone’ and ‘Kaitlyn Beth’.

    According to reports, Clukey would then send out random friend requests and once he got a few girls to bite, he’d begin establishing a relationship with them over Facebook.

    Eventually, the conversations moved from Facebook to the telephone.

    After that, Clukey, posing as the girls, would gauge their interest in having sex with an older man for money. According to WSVN, Clukey was successful in convincing at least two young girls, aged 15 and 16.

    For his first actual meetup, Clukey apparently brought a baby with him.

    From WSVN:

    One of Clukey’s victims was a 15-year-old girl who said she accepted a random Facebook friend request from another girl named Kaitlyn Beth. The girl agreed to meet an older man. The girl said she entered Clukey’s car where he asked her to remove her panties then penetrated her digitally. She told police Clukey did not do anything else because he had a baby boy “in a car seat in the rear seat of the truck.”

    Months later Clukey contacted the 15-year-old again, this time taking her to a motel where they had sex. According to a police report, Clukey drove to a pharmacy to purchase an emergency contraceptive pill and told the girl to take it.

    The Sun-Sentinel has the info on the other case:

    On August 10, Clukey again posed as a girl, this time named “Amanda.” When a 16-year-old girl answered his friend request on Facebook, he asked her if she was interested in having sex with an older man for money, police said.

    Clukey picked her up near her home. He drove her to a hotel in Margate where they had sex, then paid her and dropped her off, investigators said. They repeated the encounter a week later, according to police.

    We’ve seen this exact M.O. play out in other cases of sexual misconduct involving Facebook. Usually, the predator will create multiple fake profiles – oftentimes pretending to be people closer to the targets’ age – and use them to gain some level of trust with the victims. After that, they’ll swing the idea of sex. We’ve seen this before – an older man pretending to be a young girl, who then brokers a sex-for-cash deal with an “older man”.

    Image via WSVN

  • Facebook Sure Would Like the DEA to Stop Impersonating People

    Though the US Justice Department thinks the Drug Enforcement Agency has the right to impersonate people on Facebook for “law enforcement purposes”, Facebook sure would like them to stop.

    Facebook has sent a pointed letter to DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart asking that the DEA “cease all activities on Facebook that involve the impersonation of others.”

    “Facebook is a community where people come to share and interact using their authentic identities. As our Chief Product Officer recently explained, this core principle is what differentiates Facebook from other services on the internet. And requiring people to use their real identities on Facebook is ‘the primary mechanism we have to protect millions of people every day, all around the world, from real harm.’ The DEA’s deceptive actions violate the terms and policies that govern the use of the Facebook service and undermine trust in the Facebook community.”

    What deceptive actions, exactly?

    Facebook’s letter stems from recent reports of highly questionable behavior by DEA agents and the case’s recent rise into the national spotlight. Earlier this month, BuzzFeed reported on Sondra Arquiett, a woman who claims DEA agents stole her identity and gave it new life on Facebook after commandeering her cellphone upon her arrest in 2010. She was subsequently sentenced to probation for a small role in the sale of drugs.

    According to reports, the agents “created the fake Facebook account, posed as her, posted photos, sent a friend request to a fugitive, accepted other friend requests, and used the account ‘for a legitimate law enforcement purpose.’”

    That last little bit about “legitimate law enforcement purposes” comes from the Justice Department, who is standing by the DEA’s actions.

    This is the story with which Facebook has framed its letter.

    “Most fundamentally, the DEA’s actions threaten the integrity of our community. Facebook strives to maintain a safe, trusted environment where people can engage in authentic interactions with the people they know and meet in real life. Using Facebook to impersonate other abuses that trust and makes people feel less safe and secure when using our service,” says Facebook.

    Of course, the creation of fake accounts is 100 percent prohibited by the company’s terms of service.

    Facebook is asking the DEA to confirm that it has stopped any such impersonation tactics.

    Image via DEA, Twitter

  • These Phony Twitter Accounts Can’t Verify You (Hint: They’re Not Even Verified Themselves)

    I know that it would be really cool to be verified on Twitter. It would mean that you were important – important enough to need a verified account because of all the jokers out there that want to create fake accounts because they want to be you. You’re that cool. At least it would be cool to have the illusion of social media relevance, right?

    But if you run across a Twitter profile claiming to offer quick and easy verifications if you only retweet their posts, don’t fall for it.

    The Verge ran a story on a particular bogus Twitter account, @PrivateVerified, that had amassed over 22,000 followers in less than a day. How did it become so popular? Simple – by asking users to follow and retweet in order to receive verification.

    That account was quickly suspended, but it led to readers finding tons of other fraudulent accounts that promised verification. It’s kind of an epidemic, actually. Take for instance @VerifiedTwitter, @requestVerified and @NextVerified, all of which has thousands of followers but are now shut down.

    Of course, these types of accounts keep popping up in place of the ones Twitter catches onto. It’s like a giant game of whack-a-mole. Take @freeverifiying for instance, which has over 16,000 followers.

    Don’t do it. They can’t verify you. No. Don’t click it. What are you doing. Dont. Stahp.

    Here’s what Twitter has to say about the verification process:

    Twitter proactively verifies accounts on an ongoing basis to make it easier for users to find who they’re looking for. We concentrate on highly sought users in music, acting, fashion, government, politics, religion, journalism, media, advertising, business, and other key interest areas. We verify business partners from time to time and individuals at high risk of impersonation.

    We do not accept requests for verification from the general public. If you fall under one of the above categories and your Twitter account meets our qualifications for verification, we may reach out to you in the future.

    Twitter is not going to ask you for retweets in order to verify your account. Twitter is especially not going to ask you for retweets from a non-verified account in order to verify your account (all of these bogus accounts are un-verified themselves).

    There is one real Twitter account dealing with verified accounts, however. It’s @verified and yes, it’s verified by Twitter. Although it has over 730,000 followers, it hasn’t tweeted since August. And even though it’s an official Twitter account, it never offered quick verifications to anyone – it simply tweeted out helpful links.

  • Taliban Using Blonde, Buxom Beauties to Gain Intel on Facebook

    In many ways, it’s one of the oldest tricks in the book, but it’s being used in a very modern way. I’d like to think that most people realize that the super hot girl you meet on the internet is likely not super hot and probably not even a girl. But apparently, the Taliban is cleverly (?) fooling Australian soliders into giving away intel with fake Facebook profiles tied to buxom blonde bombshells.

    The report comes from the Australian government, who says that Australian soliders have been tricked with “fake profiles – media personnel and enemies create fake profiles to gather information. For example, the Taliban have used pictures of attractive women as the front of their Facebook profiles and have befriended soldiers.”

    For the Taliban, creating the fake profile is easy. A quick Google image search for “pretty girl” and a few minutes signing up on Facebook and they’re in. All that has to be done is to send out a bunch of friend requests and hope at least a couple bite.

    Of course, it’s easy to see why being Facebook friends with the enemy can be dangerous. Not only does it allow access to confidential information that could jeopardize operations coming from the solider his/her self, but also private info from friends and family members of the soldiers.

    The Department of Defense report also warned about geo-tagging. Since Facebook posts (photo uploads, as well) can be tagged with a location, the chances of one soldier giving up the exact whereabouts of an entire troop is greatly increased through social media.

    “Most did not recognise that people using fake profiles, perhaps masquerading as school friends, could capture information and movements. Few consider the possibilities of data mining and how patterns of behaviour can be identified over time,” said the report.

    It’s not just Australians that are being warned about the dangers of social media use during combat. Earlier this year, the U.S. Army warned soldiers about geotagging, citing an actual example where geotagged photos led to an attack on a U.S. base in Iraq back in 2007.

    [via News.com.au]

  • Facebook Goes After Fraudulent Likes

    Facebook Goes After Fraudulent Likes

    In order to cut down on fraudulent “likes” across the network, Facebook has announced that they have upped their automated efforts to remove likes that have been “gained by means that violate [thier] terms.”

    This means that likes derived from malware, fake accounts, compromised accounts, or bulk purchases will be stricken from the Facebook record.

    Why? Integrity, according to Facebook.

    “A Like that doesn’t come from someone truly interested in connecting with a Page benefits no one. Real identity, for both users and brands on Facebook, is important to not only Facebook’s mission of helping the world share, but also the need for people and customers to authentically connect to the Pages they care about. When a Page and fan connect on Facebook, we want to ensure that connection involves a real person interested in hearing from a specific Page and engaging with that brand’s content.

    Facebook was built on the principle of real identity and we want this same authenticity to extend to Pages,” they say in a Security note.

    So, will this mean that your page will suddenly drop a significant amount of likes overnight? Not likely. Facebook says that the improved efforts will only result in less than 1% of total likes being removed.

  • President Obama’s Fake Twitter Followers Outnumber Mitt Romney’s Total Followers 6 to 1

    It’s pretty safe to say that everyone on Twitter is followed by at least a few fake accounts. We always knew that bots ran rampant on the site, but recent studies into the buying and selling of fake Twitter followers has put a spotlight on just how serious the problem really is.

    Plus, there was that whole thing about Mitt Romney’s follower count making a suspicious 100K+ jump overnight.

    But in terms of sheer volume, President Obama dwarfs the presumptive Republican nominee in fake followers. A new tool from Status People allows anyone to look at the breakdown of followers of any Twitter users to see how many are “fake,” “inactive,” and “good.” And using that tool, we can see that 31% of President Obama’s followers are deemed fake. Since Obama has around 18.8 million followers, we can calculate that just shy of 6 million of them are fake.

    Mitt Romney, on the other hand, only has 900,000 followers total. Only 16% of those are fake, according to the tool. That amounts to around 144,000 phantom followers.

    And these figures don’t even take into account the “inactive” percentages, which total 39% for the President and 31% for Romney. Any number of those “Inactive” users could be fake.

    Really, it all comes down to how many followers you have. The more you have, the bigger the percentage of fakes you have as well. We recently crunched the numbers and found that, on average, over 27% of the top ten Twitter accounts’ followers are fake. That means that although Mitt Romney was in the news recently due to speculation that his campaign had bought over a hundred thousand followers overnight, he’s far from the only Twitter user to have a fake follower problem.

  • Over 27% of the Top 10 Twitter Accounts’ Followers Are Fake

    Fake Twitter followers are on everyone’s mind. Last month, GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s Twitter followers jumped substantially overnight, leading some to accuse the campaign of buying followers. They denied it of course, but it led to a much more prominent discussion of the somewhat depressing reality that many of your tweets may be falling on deaf ears. Deaf, fake ears.

    A recent study into the “Twitter Underground Economy” demonstrated just how easy it is to buy fake followers on the site. The study found that the average cost of buying 1,000 fake followers was about $18, and the average user who buys fake followers has about 48,885.

    When we say “fake,” we mean fake – accounts conjured out of thin air for the sole purpose of boosting follower counts and egos. They can also be used as retweet factories, but then again, who needs a fake account with no real followers to retweet your tweets anyway?

    Twitter has a little over 140 million active users. CEO Dick Costolo said so a few months ago. But some analysts have claimed that Twitter has over 500 million registered accounts. It doesn’t take a mathematician to see that that’s a huge percentage of inactive users.

    It’s pretty clear that Twitter is full of fake and inactive accounts. That’s not debatable. We thought it would be fun to look at the top 10 Twitter accounts (according to number of followers) and see just how many of their followers are fake and inactive.

    Lucky for us, Status People has just released a new tool that allows any Twitter user to check their (and their friends’) follower breakdown.

    “We take a sample of your follower data. Up to 500 records depending on how ‘popular’ you are and assess them against a number of simple spam criteria,” says Status People. “On a very basic level spam accounts tend to have few or no followers and few or no tweets. But in contrast they tend to follow a lot of other accounts.”

    They also say those with 10,000 or less followers will get the most accurate breakdown, but they feel confident that their tool is accurate for all Twitter users. Of course, determining what is and what isn’t a fake account isn’t an exact science, but Status People’s tool gives us a nice insight into how authentic these massive celebrity Twitter followings really are.

    We looked at the top 10 Twitter accounts in terms of follower count, and we found that that 27.1% of their followers are listed as “Fake,” on average. And a whopping 40.5% of the accounts are said to be “Inactive.” That means that only 32.4% of the accounts that follow the top 10 Twitter accounts are “Good,” legitimate users.

    Twitter Queen Lady Gaga only registered 29% “Good” followers.

    The star of the top 10 was Kim Kardashian, who registered 44% “Good” followers and only 18% “Fake.”

    Note: The top 10 Twitter accounts in terms of followers currently belong to (in order) Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Rihanna, Britney Spears, President Obama, Shakira, Taylor Swift, Kim Kardashian, and YouTube.

  • Facebook Likely Has 83 Million Fake Users

    If you picked any Facebook user at random, there is nearly a 1 in 10 chance that the user you picked isn’t real. Maybe it’s a duplicate, maybe it’s a spam account – but either way, it’s a fake Facebook user.

    How do we know this? From Facebook themselves, actually.

    In their recent 10-Q filing with the SEC, Facebook released some hard figures on how many of their users they believe to be disingenuous. Here’s what Facebook had to say when describing “limitations of key metrics”:

    For example, there may be individuals who maintain one or more Facebook accounts in violation of our terms of service, despite our efforts to detect and suppress such behavior. We estimate that “duplicate” accounts (an account that a user maintains in addition to his or her principal account) may have represented approximately 4.8% of our worldwide MAUs as of June 30, 2012.

    We also seek to identify “false” accounts, which we divide into two categories: (1) user-misclassified accounts, where users have created personal profiles for a business, organization, or non-human entity such as a pet (such entities are permitted on Facebook using a Page rather than a personal profile under our terms of service); and (2) undesirable accounts, which represent user profiles that we determine are intended to be used for purposes that violate our terms of service, such as spamming. As of June 30, 2012, we estimate user-misclassified accounts may have represented approximately 2.4% of our worldwide MAUs and undesirable accounts may have represented approximately 1.5% of our worldwide MAUs.

    Translation: 8.7% of accounts are either duplicates or “false.” Since Facebook just reported 955 million MAUs, that means they estimate their number of fake accounts to be…

    83,085,000.

    Don’t get me wrong, that’s a lot of fake users. Take the entire populations of New York City and Mumbai and multiply it by four and you’ve got the amount of fake Facebook users out there. But in terms of proportion – it really could be worse.

    Take Twitter for instance. Recent reports put them over the 500 million account threshold. But according to Twitter themselves, it’s unlikely that they have any more than 160 million active users. That’s a whole bunch of inactive accounts.

    But it just makes you wonder (especially as a page owner) whether 8.7% of your likes are from fake accounts? How about comments on your posts – are they spam accounts? And what about those ad clicks?

    [via Geekosystem]

  • Pinterest Spam: Site Seeing Influx Of Fake Accounts

    As soon as any website starts to gain attention, it invariably becomes a target for spammers and scammers–people who create faux accounts in order to lure users in to their site, whether it’s for hacking purposes or just to get them to click on an offer. Pinterest, a company which is quickly rising in the ranks of social media, is no exception.

    Although it’s not your typical social site–users don’t have to be “friends” with one another to see their photo posts–it has nonetheless been the victim of an influx of spam lately and addressed the issue on their blog:

    “In most cases, spam accounts on Pinterest create pins with misleading links and follow many people in hopes that you’ll visit their boards. You don’t need to be concerned if a spam account follows you on Pinterest, but you should definitely feel empowered to let us know about it.”

    The blog post goes on to give tips on how to avoid being sucked into the spam web, such as creating a difficult-to-guess password and never clicking on so-called Pinterest giveaways or other promotions.

    One user responded to the post with this comment, however, prompting belief that it’s possible users are finding more spam accounts than even Pinterest realized existed:

    “OK, that’s fine. But every pin I have clicked his morning has yielded this message: “Users have reported that this links to spam or other inappropriate content.”

    The company urges users to report a spam link as soon as it’s found to help them weed out the undesirables and gives step-by-step instructions on how to do it on their blog. If you see a pin that seems shady, don’t be shy about passing it on. The quicker those fake accounts are shut down, the faster you’ll be able to enjoy your regularly scheduled Pinterest programming.

  • Why The Murdochs Should Let That Wendi Deng Twitter Fake-Out Go Away

    Turns out that fun-but-not-funny fake Twitter account of Rupert Murdoch’s wife Wendi Deng wasn’t so carefree after all.

    First there was the question over whether the Murdochs should sue Twitter because the fake account actually managed to be verified albeit for only three days. But this whole verification snafu highlights a similar problem that is probably all too familiar to News Corps and Murdoch. Hollywood Reporter details the problem:

    News Corp. itself is currently being sued by an individual named Julie Riggs who ran a celebrity verification service called “Celebrity Guardian Angel,” which suffered after going toe-to-toe with the giant corporation over a Johnny Depp impostor on MySpace.

    Riggs had a MySpace page that verified whether celebrity accounts were real or not. Before Twitter launched its own service, Riggs was a pioneer in offering badges so celebrities could show they were who they said they were. But when she flagged a Depp poser on MySpace and the impostor complained, MySpace deleted her account. Then, MySpace introduced its own celebrity verification service, leading Riggs to sue.

    Ruh-roh. Well, that’s one good reason why the Murdochs should probably just let this issue trot off into obscurity. 2011 certainly was the best year for PR for the corporation given that whole phone-hacking scandal that resulted in the complete window-shuttering of News of the World. Maybe the Murdochs should take a similar route of action and, like NofW, just shut down this story altogether so nobody else comes a-knocking about that eye-sore of a lawsuit they’re dealing with concerning the MySpace verification services.

    Then again, who knows. News Corp. hasn’t really developed the reputation of shying away from controversy of, well, anything, so maybe they will sue Twitter over the fake Wendi Deng account. What do you think? Think they’ve got a case here and, if so, should they pursue it? Or should they try to make sure that 2012 is a recovery year for News Corp.’s PR? Comment below!