How to spot a fake account on social networks?

Today we decided to tell you how to recognize a fake page on VK, because, as statistics show, there are so many fakes on this social network. Why are fake profiles created? Yes, there are any number of reasons!

1. From hooliganism to write nasty things to friends;
2. Out of curiosity to find out what the other half is doing;
3. For the purpose of using for cheating or sending spam;
4. To carry out illegal activities;
5. Etc.

As you understand, meeting a fake on VK is unlikely to lead to anything good. At best, you will simply communicate with a fake person. At worst, you'll get yourself into trouble. That is why, we believe, every user should learn how to recognize a fake VKontakte page.

How to find out a user's hidden date of birth?

It happens that some people hide their dates of birth from guests/friends of the page (many ladies 25+ hide only the year), but they are still on the pages (during registration they indicated all their data and then hid it). In such cases, you can find out the year, month and day of birth of a person using a search.

We go to the search, indicate the first name, last name, city, university, etc., that is, all the data known to us, so that the person appears in the search results and there are a minimum of unnecessary people there. In the “Additional” section, indicate your expected year of birth. If it is entered incorrectly, the person will disappear from the search results, and when you guess correctly, he will appear. Tested many times.

Similarly, you can select the month and day of birth, as well as political views, school, marital status and other information.

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How to view old posts on the wall?

Here's a small life hack that will help you learn more about the past of a new acquaintance. To read a person’s statuses set five years ago, you don’t have to tire yourself of scrolling through the feed. Everything is much simpler.

We go to the person’s page and at the beginning of the wall (microblog) click on the link “To Vasya’s posts”, then click on the link “Go to search” and indicate the desired date in the calendar that appears when you click on “Posts before a certain date”. This way you can find everything that was not deleted.

Many people registered there back in 2007-2009 and have changed a lot since then. Today the girl posts “the commandments of Vedic femininity” or “the rules of the Orthodox bride,” and seven years ago she posted the statuses “who stole my thong on the registration yesterday, please return it. You can anonymously."

This works for communities too.

What mistakes should you avoid?

One of the most common mistakes when filling out a fake girl’s profile is the wrong choice of photos that will be filled into albums and on the wall.

We do not recommend:

• use faceless avatar pictures;
• choose model, professional photos - they are easily identified and immediately raise doubts about the reality of the page;
• use photographs of categorically unattractive girls.

It is best to choose the golden mean: ordinary everyday photographs of a pretty girl or woman, attractive, but not overly bright or aggressive. There should be a lot of photographs to create the illusion of a real character, so limiting yourself to one or two pictures will not work. But you shouldn’t add hundreds of them at once - it looks suspicious.

Another important rule is that you will have to spend some time creating the character’s character and displaying the corresponding data on the page. Although a fake is created for advertising purposes, having continuous advertising entries in a profile is a bad idea; such “personalities” are quickly recognized and can be blocked.

Finally, it is important to take care of a sufficient number of friends and to constantly increase their number. This is necessary for further productive activities. If many fakes are created at once in an organized manner, you can initially add some of them as friends with each other - but not all at once and not on all profiles.

How to find a chain of mutual acquaintances?

We test the theory of “six handshakes” (which, with the development of the Internet, becomes the theory of “four handshakes”). Open the NON-random connections application and indicate the id of the desired person. Until recently, you had to wait about five minutes for the chain to be built, but now it happens in a matter of seconds.

If you need to get to know someone living in your city/town with a population of several tens of thousands of people, then you most likely have a mutual friend who can introduce you. The application will help you find this person.

Many people instinctively trust friends of friends and try to please them at least a little (make a small discount, for example). The Soviet law “I am from Tamara” and the subconscious hatred of strangers, at least a little, influence everyone’s behavior.

How to protect yourself from communicating with fakes

The answer is very simple - keep track of who you add as friends and with whom you communicate.

Try to filter those you add as friends - go to their pages and check their completeness. Ideally, try to only approve applications from people you know personally.

In private messages, only respond to people you have communicated with or those whose page has identifying information. Otherwise, you may well stumble upon a fake account.

In other social networks, exactly the same rule applies - contact and subscribe only to those you know personally, otherwise with a high degree of probability you may stumble upon a fake profile.

It is important to make one remark - fakes are not bad.

By themselves they do not pose any danger. Many people simply hide their information, however, they communicate adequately and, if necessary, can share information about themselves.

You just need to keep in mind that on the Internet, any information about yourself and your life can be easily faked - to the point that a man can be hiding behind the page of a pretty girl.

Therefore, you should only treat fakes with caution, but in no case should you be afraid and avoid them.

Security measures

In order not to stumble upon attackers, it is worth following some safety precautions when communicating with people on the Internet - and in the case of fakes, these rules become especially relevant.

• Do not store personal phone numbers or home addresses on your page. At a minimum, make them open exclusively to friends or a certain circle of people.
• When communicating with strangers, try not to talk about personal details of your life - the same address of residence or work.
• Try to check the pages of your interlocutors to reduce the likelihood of communicating with a fake.
• In general, it all comes down to not sharing very personal information with random interlocutors. You can talk about your hobbies, some stories, but try to avoid specifics, as well as unnecessary details about yourself or your life.

By following these simple recommendations, even when communicating with a fake, you will significantly protect yourself and be sure that no personal details will leak online and become public domain.

How to view statistics of visits to your page?

Do you wonder how often people view and like your profile? It's very easy to find out. This is the case when they say: don’t have 100 rubles, but have 100 friends.

If you have less than 100 subscribers, then we delete a certain number of friends so that there are at least 101 subscribers. After that, at the very bottom of the page you will have a link to a page with statistics (in the new version of the design, a little higher), where views and likes of your page are visible by day and month. It’s better to do this late at night in order to have time to send new invitations with explanations to remote people. However, for some this will just be a reason to finally clear their feed.

If you do not need to constantly display a link to statistics, then you can view it by simply pasting https://vk.com/stats?mid=

+ your page id.

Information about people can be collected not only on VK, but also in thousands of other places. I have already written something on this topic.

Good day everyone, gentlemen! Do you know how to spot a fake on VKontakte?

? You don’t know what a fake on a social network is? Then first things first.

Fake, as you already guessed, is not a word from Ozhegov’s Russian dictionary. This word is English and it means “untruth, falsification”, and for us the most suitable translation would be “fake”.

«Fake

- fake, fake"

Fake accounts are created, as a rule, to promote their goods or services, for spam, or for trolling. There are also cases when pages are created as an alternative to their real accounts, so as not to use their real names and photographs.

What does this mean on the Internet and in life?

Today, examples of fakes in real life include iPhones from Chinese manufacturers, medicines and food products, for example, the sale of margarine under the guise of butter. Counterfeit medicines can harm consumer health, just like cosmetics with dubious ingredients.

The most developed fake is on the Internet. This concept also includes fake accounts on various forums and social networks, fake online stores and various websites, photographs, videos and even news.

Fake videos are actively spreading across the Internet, collecting many comments in discussions. A huge number of views brings good profits to the creators of such videos. Unlike counterfeit drugs, these videos are harmless. But phisher sites, the purpose of which is to extract passwords for access to electronic wallets and bank cards, can cause damage to the finances of citizens. Therefore, you should be careful online when reading emails or following links to third-party sites.

How to find out if VKontakte is fake

I will write about how I personally identify fake pages, I think there will be nothing difficult for you here. It is not necessary to use the full list; a couple of points will be enough to prove whether it is fake or not. Let's consider the option that a stranger knocks at our friend's door.

1. The first thing we pay attention to is the avatar
   (what is an avatar we considered) of the user. This will be a photo of a young man or girl. If it’s a girl, then she’s in a bathing suit, if it’s a guy, then she’s in the gym with a powerful and toned body. This is done in order to arouse our interest and at least visit the page, which is quite logical.
2. We go to the fake page. Let's look at the number of photos
   . Usually, those who create fake VKontakte pages are not particularly diligent in filling out the pages, so most often we see no more than 50 photos, a maximum of 100. But this still does not prove anything. It is quite possible that privacy settings have hidden all other photos. Yes, there are often photographs of beauties “without a face” (photos mostly from the back, side, whatever, but without a face).
3. Click on the user's picture and see the total number of downloaded avatars
   . It is unlikely that the number will exceed 20, but this again does not prove anything. We look at the date of addition - usually all avatars and other pictures are added in batches and one-time, which means the date will be the same. If so, then this is already 90% of the fact that this is a fake account.
4. Checking the number of subscribers
   . Wow, there are more than 1000 here. What this means is that by adding this person to your friends, after a while you yourself will be among her subscribers, that is, you will simply be removed from the list of friends and left as subscribers . This is done to increase the ranking in people’s searches (the more subscribers, the higher the page in the search results).
5. Let's look Friend list.
   And here we find a huge number of “dogs” (remote users). This again says that the account is “friends” with everyone indiscriminately: those who spam on walls and in private messages, and so on. It is likely that this consideration awaits our heroine.

   

6. Let's look at the number of interesting pages
   . Here again there may be more than 2, or even 3 hundred pages. Let's open it. Scroll to the bottom of the list. Oh, after the public pages (communities), there are a huge number of profiles of other users. Know that these are the people to whom a friend request was also sent, but was rejected. Thus, the fake account automatically subscribes to another user page. And if among them there are 5-10, or even more “dogs”, then the proof is already 99 percent.
7. Activity on the wall.
   Until we add an account as a friend, we will most likely see only his personal posts and reposts on the wall. Usually this number is small, and reposts are collected from all groups indiscriminately (but this is very difficult to determine, people are different, and so are their tastes))

   

8. Also, if we have access to media files
   : video recordings or audio recordings, then again we look at the quantity. It is unlikely that they will number in the hundreds, unlikely!

Yes, don’t be surprised if you send a message to a fake and they respond to you. Behind the picture of a stunning blonde there may well be a fat-bellied bearded man hiding, yes, this is not fiction. In addition, technology does not stand still, and it is possible that a self-learning robot (a specially written script) is talking to you.

There are a large number of leftist pages on the social network. People create or buy them (see), for a variety of purposes. Advertising, PR or fraud. When you communicate with a user, you would like to know whether this is a real person or a fake page. How can you find out?

There are many ways. Now I will show you how to identify a fake VKontakte

.

What happens if you provide someone else's data?

If you use someone else's first and last name, photographs, address and other personal information, you can get punished for having a fake account. And that's why:

1. Firstly, name, date of birth, place of residence, place of education and any other personal information that directly or indirectly relates to a specific person is personal data (Clause 1, Article 3 of Federal Law No. 152 “On Personal Data”). Their distribution without the permission of the subject of personal data is prohibited (Article 7 of Federal Law No. 152).
2. Secondly, photographs containing the image of a citizen are under the protection of Art. 152.1 Civil Code. It is prohibited to use photographs of him without the consent of this citizen.

The type and form of liability will depend on the purposes for which other people’s information was used and the seriousness of the violation committed.

Administrative responsibility

The use of other people's personal data on social networks, provided that it does not pursue any malicious or criminal intent, may be qualified as unauthorized processing of personal data . In this case, the account creator may be held liable under Part 1 of Art. 13.11 Code of Administrative Offences. He faces a warning or a fine for creating a fake page in the amount of 1-3 thousand rubles.

Criminal liability

It all depends on the purpose of creating a fake.

If a false page is created to disseminate false information discrediting the honor and dignity of a citizen, this is slander .

For example, if someone created a page with photographs and the name of a girl, and on her behalf distributes information about the provision of intimate services.

Libel is qualified under Part 1 of Art. 128.1 of the Criminal Code and threatens the account creator with a fine of up to 500 thousand rubles or compulsory labor of up to 160 hours.

Can they be jailed for fake news? Of course, but only if the account creator thus disseminates information about the private life of a person that constitutes his personal and family secret .

For example, if the same creator of the fake page from the previous example posted on it photographs of an already naked girl, which could not be obtained from open sources.

In this case, its action falls under the qualifications of Part 1 of Art. 137 CC. In this case, several types of liability are provided:

• a fine of up to 200 thousand rubles or 18 months’ salary;
• compulsory work up to 360 hours;
• up to 1 year of correctional labor;
• up to 3 years of forced labor;
• arrest for 4 months;
• imprisonment for up to 2 years.

And the actions of the account creator may be classified as fraud. For example, if he created someone’s clone page, added other people’s contacts as friends and writes to them with a request to urgently borrow some small amount of money. Such actions are qualified under Art. 159 of the Criminal Code and can result in punishment of up to 2 years in prison.

Civil responsibility

If the guilt of the creator of a fake using a citizen’s personal data is proven in administrative or criminal proceedings, compensation for moral damage can also be recovered from him (Clause 2 of Article 24 of Federal Law No. 152). But to do this, the victim will have to additionally file a claim against the fake page, or more precisely, against its creator, in court. The amount of compensation in each case is determined individually. Here is an example when moral damage amounted to 50 thousand rubles.

In the same lawsuit, the victim will be able to ask the court to protect his honor and dignity (Article 152 of the Civil Code). If the demand is satisfied, the creator of the fake will be forced to refute the defamatory information in the same or another similar way.

Suspicious photos

If we are talking about fraud, then attackers like to add photographs of beautiful women or men to the page. This is how they attract the attention of the opposite sex. Here's an example.

As you can see, all the photos are of excellent quality, the girl in them is attractive. On the pages of real people, you can also see photos from life. Agree, it’s quite unnatural when only high-quality photos are presented.

But from photographs alone it is impossible to conclude whether the page is fake or not. Go ahead.

How to spot a fake? You need to check the registration date of the page (see). If it was created recently, in 99% of cases, you are dealing with a fake.

What is needed for this? Copy the user id (see).

Now go to this service:

https://220vk.com/regdate

Here, insert the id into the form and click on the “Check user” button.

As we can see, the page was created today. This is definitely fake.

What is fake in simple words

The easiest way to explain the meaning of the term is through examples from life. A fake can be called any fake in the field of science, creativity or industrial production.

At the most primitive everyday level, there are fakes and counterfeits of well-known brands that produce branded clothing, shoes and other products. A consonant name, where only one letter has been changed, misleads the consumer, forcing him to mistake a counterfeit for a product from a reliable manufacturer. Sports shoes “Adibas”, suits “Puna”, counterfeit products of famous cosmetic brands are the most typical examples of fake goods.

The goal of manufacturers of such products is very simple. Making a profit that arises from increased sales of counterfeit products that are mistaken by the buyer for a well-known brand.

History of origin, or how the fake appeared

People have been creating copies of valuable objects since ancient times. The appearance of an exquisite item that interested the public was always accompanied by the appearance of its copies. Artistic paintings by famous masters, jewelry, and dishes were counterfeited. Previously, buying a fake was considered a big nuisance. Nowadays, buyers sometimes deliberately purchase cheap copies of products from well-known manufacturers.

Manufacturers of such goods use the similarity with the name of a popular brand to actively promote their products. A well-known technique is to replace one letter in a famous logo. The law is observed, but it is not entirely fair to the consumer.

The concept of “fake” on Instagram

Fake profiles have always been created, from the very beginning of the social network. As a rule, such accounts are registered in batches or purchased on special websites. Users can use them for spam and advertising of certain projects. Also, some unscrupulous sites offer cheating of activity, using bots for this task.

It is clear that the effectiveness of this method of promotion is simply zero.

But fake profiles can also be created on behalf of a popular person. In this case, they are usually used to recruit a good audience in order to start making money in the future from advertising or selling their own services. And let’s not forget about scammers who, under the guise of a famous person, lure money or personal information. This area is quite extensive, so we will not go into details.

Creating a fake on VK without a phone

It is worth noting that the administration of the social network does not support fake profiles, so users should remember that, even knowing how to make a fake VKontakte page, they may encounter difficulties. If there is evidence that the profile owner is using someone else's information, the page may be blocked.

That is why it is necessary to approach the creation of a page as creatively and thoroughly as possible. The first is required to create a unique image that others will like, and the second is needed to avert suspicion. If both points are taken into account, all that remains is to promptly update your status, photos and publications, sharing the latest news and posts with subscribers.