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If you’re on Instagram, you’ve probably come across a number of fake accounts. You may not even have an idea that these accounts are not authentic.
The importance that is placed on the number of followers that a person has is misleading and remains the driving force behind many fake accounts.
Here’s are two things many social media influencers don’t tell people:
- Raising followers organically is quite tasking.
- Fake accounts cannot take the place of real accounts unless you put in efforts (organically) to grow it.
This is why people buy fake accounts and fake followers to measure up. Except you don’t appreciate having real followers and following them back to see and share organic content from time to time, you have to be on the lookout for these fake ones.
If you’re looking to gain more followers on Instagram, check out this blog post.
Some people even create false accounts to troll celebrities or other popular people on Instagram.
Here are some things to watch out for to identify a fake Instagram account:
1. Unrealistic profile photos
Because they are trying to copy a real account, these fake accounts usually put a picture of a really hot girl or boy as the profile picture. This is done in a bid to make the account look interesting and attractive. Take a look at the bio too. They are usually promising unrealistic offers to their followers or cooking up an unbelievable background story. It is also characteristic of many fake accounts to have no profile photo. In some cases, they are not even made to look organic at all.
2. How the posts are shared
One sure way to confirm fake accounts is how they share posts. If you check sometimes, the picture and post in the feeds don’t even look like the profile picture. In some instances, you’ll see that the account’s bio mentions a profession or hobby while the posts in the feeds will be totally unrelated.
Imagine having the picture of a trade show displays for a pool party uploaded on the Instagram page of a supposed finance firm. Unrelated post, right?
One other thing to notice about their posts is the frequency and the time in which their shared posts are made. In their pursuit to look authentic, these people hastily set up the profiles and then share a few pictures. Sometimes, the pictures they share are quite sparse with as little generated activity as possible. These people who build and sell these fake accounts do it as quick as they can as soon as the opportunity arises, and that’s why their posts are usually strange and scanty.
3. High followers/following with low activity
There’s no bigger indicator for fake Instagram accounts than this. Due to the motive of these accounts, they are highly skewed in the number of followers when compared to their feed or stories. Most of them have maxed out following, which is exactly 7,500 accounts or somewhere around that amount. This doesn’t mean every account around this amount of following is fake, but it doesn’t hurt to be on the lookout.
4. Use a fake follower finding tool
There are many special Instagram applications for fishing fake accounts. A lot of them can be found in your respective smartphone app stores. They use a lot of statistics and authentication technology to figure out which accounts are real and fish out the ones that aren’t.
NeoReach also offers a fraud detection service! Get started with us today to find out more.
Conclusion
Now you have a few tips to guide you when next you go through your followers and those you follow to pick out the fake ones.
Here are two extra summative points that will help you in unfollowing fake accounts:
- Some previously active accounts which then became dormant may fit many of these characteristics of fake accounts.
- You can conclude on which of the accounts are not original when they check off at least three of the four tips given.
