Thousands of new accounts are created daily on Instagram by new users or, in the worst case, by people who impersonate others. This is known as a fake account, and it is a big problem for the social network to detect them quickly. For this reason, today we are going to explain all the tips to know if a profile is false and what you can do to report it on Instagram.
Tricks to detect fake accounts on Instagram
This type of people who create a false profile within social networks can do so for several reasons : they do not want to give their real name, they seek to gain followers quickly or, for example, they intend to harass or harm a person and that he does not know who it is.
In short, and whatever your intentions, supplanting the identity of any other user is something that is wrong, that Instagram or any other social network wants on its platform and that, of course, is completely illegal. Therefore, and to facilitate the work of the “little camera” app, we are going to review all the tips that we can follow to detect false accounts and then we will show you how you can report these profiles.
Verified profiles on Instagram
In most cases, the most impersonated profiles of any social network are those of celebrity accounts. Luckily, these are the easiest to identify if it is a fake account or not.
The first step or element that you should observe is whether the account you want to analyze has the verification badge of its profile. This element is the small blue check that accompanies the username that Instagram grants to those people who have proven the identity and veracity of their account. Typically, this element is found in influencer profiles. So, if the account you are consulting represents a public image such as a singer, actor, footballer or someone who is considered “famous” and does not have this badge, it is likely that it is a fake profile.
Do a quick name search
Something super simple and that can put you on alert to detect false accounts is to look for the name of said user in the Instagram search engine. If you click on the magnifying glass icon in the bottom bar, you write the username of that person and several accounts appear with the same or a very similar photo (accompanied by similar user names), you are facing a person that several users are trying to impersonate. This, again, usually happens with those profiles of influential users on social networks and, normally, the official account will have the verified badge that we mentioned in the previous section.
Check the number of followers
Another key point that fake accounts tend to fulfill is related to the users who follow them and the interactions they make with their account.
If when looking for the username on Instagram you find a similar profile (as we explained in the previous section) but with many more followers, the account you were investigating is probably false. But be careful because both accounts may have many followers, although the false one will always have less. In these cases it is very useful to look at the number of profiles that this person follows, that is, if that person has 10,000 followers but the number of users they follow is 9,000, for example, they probably follow the “follow x follow” technique. . This is a negative practice when it comes to growing in social networks that consists of following many people so that they also follow you and both grow in followers.
But of course, if it is a “smart” person, he will periodically clean many users so that the difference is great and does not give him away easily. What can we do in these cases? We can use third-party tools such as SocialBlade that tells us the history of gaining followers. If you detect constant “peaks” or sharp drops in the number of followers, you may use the “follow x follow”. Therefore, if you see something strange in this section, it is one more indication to detect fake accounts on Instagram.
Check your photos on Google Images
A very useful tool to detect fake profiles is Google itself with its image detection service . To carry out this process we must follow some very simple steps:
- Download one of the photos from that account, or take a snapshot of the profile photo itself and then crop it.
- Enter your browser and go to Google. Now force the desktop view in your browser from the settings and then enter the images section that you will see in the upper right corner of the web.
- Click on the camera icon and enter “upload an image”. Now select it from your gallery and voila.
As you can see, Google analyzes the photo and searches all the places where it is published. If you see that it has been used by many websites, it is likely that it is used to impersonate another user.
Account information: origin and previous user names
Although it is not visible to the naked eye, Instagram gives us the possibility of knowing certain information about any profile that will allow us to detect false accounts. This section is called “Information about this account” and we can enter it by pressing the menu with the three dots in the upper right corner of the profile of any account.
Within this section we have access to certain details of the identity of that profile such as: the date of creation of the account, the location, previous user names and followers in common with you. Characteristics such as a location in a country other than the residence of that profile or constant changes in the username are indicative of fake accounts on Instagram. What’s more, even the social network itself warns us when accessing this data in this section.
How to report a fake account on Instagram
Now that you know all the tips to detect fake profiles on this social network, it is time for you to learn to report them to prevent these users from continuing to impersonate others.
You just have to access your profile and click on the menu with the three dots at the top. Here you will see the option to “Report” in red. Press it. Instagram will ask you why you want to report that account, which in this case corresponds to “It’s spam.” By clicking on it, you will automatically inform Instagram of the alleged impersonation and they will take the appropriate measures.
This is all you have to do to detect and report fake accounts on this social network. With our help, we make Instagram’s work easier and, little by little, fake accounts will disappear from the internet. If you have any questions about the process, leave us a comment and we will try to solve it for you as soon as possible.
