Trace a Fake Instagram Profile?

You really don’t like that account and now you want to check if it is a fake Instagram profile? How to trace a fake Instagram profile? One of Instagram’s biggest problems, as with other social networks, is the abundance of fake accounts.

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Accounts that are controlled by a robot, by those who assume the identity of a prominent figure or by people who hide behind a fake account.

These accounts are also very annoying because they are normally used for advertising, they are useful in filling your account with spam. To avoid such situations, I will explain how to find out if an Instagram account is fake.

One of the most common features of fake accounts is spam comments. They are not too difficult to identify, they always repeat the same message, the same photos, links to websites, etc.

It is very common to find such comments in a different language. This suggests that the Instagram account is fake. If you notice an account that tells a lot of lies or makes bad comments every time you post something on your Instagram for no apparent reason, the account is probably fake.

How to trace a fake Instagram profile?

In addition, they can also talk or comment with other users with whom they have no relationship. Singers, actors, or athletes are not spared. While searching for a celebrity on Instagram, the search result will be full of people using the same name.

Creating a fake Instagram profile is very simple. Simply create an account using the name you want to impersonate and then enter the profile information with that person’s details. This feature proliferates fake accounts on social networks.

Some are created to send spam of any kind, others to use the net without anyone recognizing you, and many other times to annoy or harass people who present themselves as someone else.

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How to understand if an Instagram profile is fake?

Instagram is not doing anything to try to stop the proliferation of these accounts, so it is best to take a look at these tips for detecting fake accounts on Instagram. Gradually you will be able to understand if an Instagram profile is fake with the naked eye.

1. Check your account interactions

A good way to find out if an Instagram account is fake is to review the interactions. For this, the fastest thing is to open some of the photos you have posted on the profile and see likes and comments.

If you see that the photos do not have any text at the bottom or are very generic texts and if there are also no comments and I don’t like it, you can start to suspect the veracity of the account.

2. Search for your profile picture in Google Images

The first thing you can do to use this method is to download the account profile picture. For this, you can directly take a screenshot of the profile photo with your mobile phone (you can take a screenshot of the entire screen and then crop it to keep only the profile photo).

With the photo in your phone’s memory, open your favorite browser and sign in to  Google Images. Once inside, force your phone to load the full version of the web. From here all you have to do is upload the profile photo you downloaded in the previous point and check the results.

If you see that the same photo or a very similar one with the same person appears multiple times,  start wary.

Also, if you see other profiles from Instagram, Facebook, or any other social network with other names appearing, you can already assume almost 100% that it is a fake account.

3. How to find out a fake Instagram profile? Check out the followers!

This is another very useful method that many people turn to. Open your profile and click on the Followers section.

Once inside you will see a  list with all the accounts you follow that you suspect are fake. If it’s really a fake account, there are usually two possible scenarios: that it doesn’t have followers (or very few) or it has hundreds of followers, all with names from other countries, without profile photos, etc., etc.

For example, if the account you believe is fake uses a common name in Italy, but all of its followers have Arabic, Chinese or Russian names, it begins to suspect that it has purchased followers to impersonate the account as real.

4. Automatic comments or likes

If you get messages every time you post a new photo with generic phrases like “Nice photo” “Great job, keep it up”, “I love all your posts” is most likely a bot.

These are created just for this, to comment on other people who upload content related to the topic that its creator has established. The goal of these is to grow the account in followers and for this reason, it automatically interacts with other accounts that upload content on a related topic.

In addition, they also use other methods such as following you a few minutes after following another account on the same topic, to see if you follow it too, etc. etc.

These accounts are not necessarily fake. Many people use this method to try to grow on social networks, but what is clear is that their interest is to make themselves known as quickly as possible, even by using “shortcuts” of this type.

5. Check your email or phone

This method is a little more “research” and really useful only if you think you know who is behind a fake account.

Instagram does not directly provide your email or phone. But there is a way to see a snippet of some of this data that can help you figure out if the person you suspect is really behind that account.

To do this check, the first thing you need to do is to try logging into Instagram with your username from the mobile app or web version. In doing this you will have to choose the option Forgot your password?

Instagram will show you a field where you have to write your username. Enter it at the bottom of the window where it indicates that you have sent an email or an SMS (depending on whether the account is associated with one thing or another).

With the data displayed you can already check if the numbers correspond to that person’s phone or if the email is true.

Of course, this is not a 100% reliable method, as they may have created an email specifically to open the account or use one you don’t know and the same thing happens with the phone number. Nonetheless, it is a good approach and on some occasions, it can be very helpful to clarify doubts if you suspect someone.

6. How to trace a fake Instagram profile using third-party tools

The great growth of fake followers and the great damage they are generating has led to the development of tools capable of detecting these fake followers or robots that act as real profiles on Instagram and other social networks. Among some of the most popular and most voted tools by users are  HypeAuditor and  SocialBlade.

In both cases, these are tools that can analyze Instagram profiles and other networks such as YouTube, Twitter, or Twitch, among others, and detect fake accounts among the followers of these profiles. Applications that can analyze profiles on Instagram and other social networks and that will show us relevant information about them and that will help us determine if they are fake profiles or not.

You can also use a page where you need to enter the Instagram ID and thus unmask the crafty. This page crawls all of your followers, activity, interactions, etc. To trace a fake Instagram profile.

You can decide who you want to remove from the list of followers. A recent study revealed that fake accounts have an average of 6 publications against an average of 55.

Only 29% of fake accounts have no data (profile picture, biography, first and last name, or location). Therefore, when you meet a profile that does not have a photo, biography and has very few activities, they are almost certainly false.