by: Better Business Bureau
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Fake social media accounts can promote fake products, spread scams, and even share lies and misinformation. It’s important to spot a fake account right away – before engaging with their content. The following tips will help you discern which social media accounts are real and which are fake.
Tips for Identifying Fake Social Media Accounts
- Look carefully at the content. Scammers and fake news spreaders often fill their feeds with stock footage, memes, or other recycled images that aren’t original. They may use profile pictures that are not of a real person or simply an avatar. Beware of accounts without original images. Posts that contain no written content, or written content with lots of spelling or grammatical errors, can also be signs of a fake account.
- Analyze account transparency. Are you wondering who manages this account? If an account profile is little more than generic phrases, quotes, or introductions, with no details about a person’s name, profession, or background, you may have come across a fake account.
- Inspect the quality of engagement. Some fake social media accounts buy engagement. This means that at first glance, their account seems to have many real followers. However, these bought fans and followers usually leave comments unrelated to the post, comments that are just emojis, and several single-person comments that aren’t part of a conversation. Even real accounts inevitably gather a few fake followers, but if most of the engagement seems fake, steer clear.
- Examine the follower to engagement ratio. Account owners can also buy followers, so a telltale sign of a fake account is thousands of followers, with little to no engagement.
- Take advantage of verification indicators. Not every average Joe will have a verification flag by name, but if you want to follow someone who is famous or influential, make sure they have a legitimate, verified badge on their profile. Check each social media network’s FAQ section separately to find out what the verification badge should look like and where it should be located in the account. Accounts without verification are potentially held by imposters.
- Beware of polarized political views. Accounts designed to spread misinformation or influence political views often promote one-sided views that border on extremism. If an account only posts one-sided political theories and ideals, never revealing information about the person posting, you may be dealing with a troll.
- Beware of fake reviews. Another use of fake social media accounts is to influence consumers with fake reviews. If an account only provides overwhelmingly positive or negative reviews about a brand, without giving details about the company or its products, it’s probably not real.
- Beware of scams. Fake social media accounts are also a favorite tool for scammers. If a social media account repeatedly shares the same link over a short period of time, or if the account shares a link with incorrect information about where it leads, it’s likely a scam. Only click on links you trust, otherwise you might fall victim to a phishing scam and download malware to your device.
For more information, see BBB.org.
To report a scam, go to BBB.org/ScamTracker.
