Hello, friends! We all know that there are many fake accounts on the VK social network: some are created for earning money, some for personal reasons, and some for the purpose of deception. Today I will tell you how to recognize a fake VKontakte account so as not to fall for scammers.
What you should pay attention to:
- Avatar and photos;
- Page age;
- Wall;
- Friends and subscribers;
- Video recordings.
And now about everything in more detail.
Avatar and photos
Usually, a photo that arouses interest . If it’s a girl, then in a swimsuit, with a good figure, with emotions on her face: a smile, a laugh. If the man is either a beefy handsome guy or a “respectable entrepreneur” in a suit. Seeing a friend invitation from such a person, you will definitely go to his page, out of curiosity, see who it is.
There are few photographs in the albums:
If there are a lot of photos, then there are no friends in them, mostly these are pictures from the Internet, demotivators or beautiful photographs, and they were added in a short period of time.
There is another option to check the photo for fake VK through Google images. To do this, right-click on the photo and copy the url of the image.
To do this, go to Google images:
Click search by image:
And we get a bunch of accounts with the same photo:
Several more fake accounts were immediately identified.
How to spot a fake VKontakte?
Anyone can encounter a fake, although, as a rule, we are talking about the male gender. For example, a beautiful woman writes to a guy: supposedly she wants to meet him, but for this he must follow the link on her wall. What about the guys? Guys follow a link to a third-party site and either “run into” a virus or are offered pleasure for money. How to spot a fake?
If you are asked to follow a link on a page, this alone indicates that they are trying to scam you. In this case, we are not necessarily talking about a virus or paid pleasures. Perhaps we are talking about some kind of game, and the link on the wall is a referral link. By starting the game and depositing funds into it, the fake will earn commissions from you. In general, there is no crime, but the very fact of this type of “divorce” is alarming.
It’s a completely different matter when the beauty in your avatar wants to meet you. Here the situation is much more complicated. The first step is to determine the age of the page. First, we find out the user id if he uses a name instead of id. To do this, for example, click on the list of the user’s friends, after which you will see the user’s id in the browser line.
Next, using a special application or some website, we determine the age of the page. If it lasts a week or even a month, the likelihood that this is a fake is high.
If you don’t want to bother searching for dates, you can do it much simpler. As a rule, fakes upload a large number of photos, and in a very short period of time. We go to the page of the fake, find the last photo and, there, the conspiracy is revealed.
The user has more than 50 photos, but all of them were uploaded today. However, this is not a guarantee that the message was written to you by a fake.
Pay attention to the photographs themselves. As a rule, these are images of a very, very pretty girl, often even in underwear. In addition, photographs can be professional, which is visible to the naked eye. Copy the link to the user's photo:
Next, open the Google Images service, click on the camera image, paste the link and click “Search by image.”
The result is in front of you. We used a picture of SpongeBob as an example, but you will see numerous photographs of a fake girl and, most likely, her real name. Usually this is some kind of model.
We also recommend that you visit the user’s page and look for suspicious links on it that lead to third-party sites with the caption “Click” or something like that. They are often shortened using link shorteners. If there are any, it is not recommended to walk through them to avoid possible problems.
It is interesting that the number of friends, among whom, by the way, will probably be entirely male, is not an indicator. There can be several hundred friends and all this in a short period - they themselves are added as friends to the fake. By the way, the most important thing is that under the photo of the princess there may be a “menacing bearded admin” hiding, so it is quite likely that you are chatting not with a girl, but with a guy. Be careful, especially with your deepest secrets.
Please note that the aspects mentioned here do not guarantee that what you are looking at is fake. However, it is worth paying attention to the facts described. A little experience and soon you will immediately begin to understand where the fake is and where the real user is.
Page age
When registering, each page is given an id number. With it you can understand how long ago the account was created.
It happens that the address is hidden:
No problem. Go to the list of the user's friends and look at the id there:
In the second example, we get id = 277,822,076. Next, you can find out the approximate age of the page: if id = 100,000,000, this indicates that it was created in 2010. 190,000,000 - in 2012. In our case, id = 277,822,076 was created quite recently. This is the first call that you should pay attention to when checking for fake pages on VK.
How to deal with a 100% fake?
Once you know for sure that the profile you are looking for is not real, your actions should depend on the situation at the moment. Consider the following questions:
- What damage or loss have you, as an individual, received from communicating with a fake?
- Has your image or reputation been damaged in VK?
- Have any illegal actions been committed against you (threats, financial scams, fraud, etc.);
- What activities does the fake in question conduct? Does it have illegal motives? Remember, remaining silent makes you an unspoken accomplice!
Next, act as your conscience dictates. First, you need to block the person.
Secondly, write a complaint to the VKontakte support service.
Third, if necessary, contact the police. The competent authorities will be able to use the IP to determine the location and identity of the fraudster, and the management of the social network will block the account. Well, by adding it to the emergency situation, you will protect yourself from further harmful influence.
Well, now you know how to understand that a page on VK is fake, and you are also taught how to proceed. In conclusion, we will give one last piece of advice: send a newsletter to mutual friends - let everyone know the enemy by sight!
User's wall
Next, look at the notes on the wall. Here is an example of a 100% fake created to make money from advertising:
It happens that a fake was created for other purposes and there are no advertising materials on the wall. Here we look at the following, which may cause suspicion:
- The number of posts on the wall (usually there are few);
- Almost nothing but reposts from other groups. There are no entries of your own;
- There is no activity of friends: likes, comments and reposts;
How to spot a fake Facebook account?
The social network Facebook does not have automated methods for finding fake accounts, so you will have to identify fake users manually. The first step is to check the main photo posted on the user’s page. To do this, just do the following:
- Go to the page of the user being verified.
- Right-click on the person’s photo and select “Find this image in Yandex” from the context menu.
- Get acquainted with the results that the search engine will provide.
As can be seen in the example above, we have before us a well-known resident of the Comedy Club project, and it is unlikely that he would write personal messages to anyone advertising products or offering to buy a unique exercise machine that increases muscle mass in a matter of days. Therefore, if someone writes to someone from such an account, then there is a huge probability that it is being done by a fake user.
You should also be suspicious of all Facebook profiles with main photos of a model appearance and those accounts that were created quite recently (the Timeline application will help you find out the date of registration of your Facebook account).
List of friends and subscribers
Next, look at the list of friends. For fake accounts it often looks like this:
Sometimes fakes monitor their accounts and delete blocked users. Here you can go through his friends, if you come across a lot of advertising accounts, pay attention to this.
Pay attention to the number of subscribers.
If a person has a lot of followers, he is not necessarily a fake, but you will not receive any benefit or communication from him. Over time, he will simply unfriend you and you will become another subscriber. Why do they do this , you ask - the more subscribers a page has, the higher it ranks in the search for a contact.
Calculate fake
Why should you contact us?
The IT department of our detective agency will handle the task of calculating a fake. We specialize in identifying anonymous users of such popular services as VKontakte, Facebook, Instagram, etc. We also find people from dating sites with whom contact has been lost.
We will help in the following situations:
- you were deceived by a person on the Internet, and after that he deleted his page or hid information about himself; - a person writes to you on social networks, but it seems to you that he is not who he claims to be; — an anonymous user has taken possession of your intimate photos and is blackmailing you; — someone writes insults from a fake account; — it seems to you that your loved one is secretly using an anonymous account to flirt.
Finding a fake on your own is an extremely time-consuming task. To do this, it is not enough to reach an agreement with the site administrator (although this in itself is not easy) - in this case, you will only receive the IP address of a specific user, and not at all his passport or contact information. To establish the identity and location of an anonymous person, serious technical measures and, of course, ingenuity are required. Our specialists managed to get on the trail of the anonymous person using social engineering - namely, by corresponding with the attacker. This approach is relevant if the connection with the criminal is not severed. For example, you continue to be blackmailed after you have transferred money to the extortionist.
We are able not only to find out who writes from a fake page, but also to bring this person to justice if his actions are criminal in nature. However, anonymity on the Internet is not always associated with crime. Secret admirers also often resort to this form of communication. At the same time, they do not have the courage to reveal their identity. In this case, we will simply tell you the real name of the admirer.
Order service
The Legion agency has been working in the detective services market for more than ten years. Our staff employs the best professionals - not only operatives, but also IT specialists, lawyers, psychologists, translators and other specialized experts. The agency is certified with a license from the Ministry of Internal Affairs to conduct detective activities - which means that, if necessary, the information we obtain will be much easier to legalize in the courtroom. We guarantee complete confidentiality, the most transparent cooperation scheme and a sensitive emotional approach to all our Customers.
Want to spot a fake? Contact Legion - our doors are always open.
Videos
There are two options here: there are few videos and there are many videos.
If there are none or very few, fakes rarely bother with this section. If there are a lot of them, look at what kind of video it is, could one person be interested in the topics covered in the video? There are fakes that specifically add popular videos so that there are transitions to them. Most often these are some high-profile events (politics, incidents), entertainment programs (Comedy club), erotica - what is most often sought in contact.
The fakes have practically no audio recordings—a dozen or two, just for show.
How to find out the VKontakte page ID?
ID is a unique identification number assigned to each registered person within a social network. Finding it is not difficult - these are numbers or Latin characters in the address bar of the browser after the / (slash) symbol when going to the main VK page of the user you are looking for.
For example, when you get to the desired page you see https://vk.com/id80489534, then the id is 80489534. If for some reason you cannot find the ID in the above way, then there is an option to go to the page entries, then the last characters in The browser's address bar will also contain ID characters.
Let's move on to the main question of the article: is it possible, knowing the ID, to find out the IP of a VKonakte user? Using cunning and not entirely legal maneuvers, this can be done.
