How To Detect Fake Profiles?
Here are few steps that should help you to detect fake profiles on social
networks like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Google+, Hi5, Sonico, vKontakte.ru,
Bebo, Badoo, Woome, Urbae, etc... Let's take common situation we are all
familiar with: Someone adds me as a friend and i don't know him/her from real
life. What to do now? Should i accept friendship without knowing who it is,
should i reject it and risk of having someone important insulted? I say let's
check him out by following these steps below, and make decision in the end :)
1. First of all, check out if you have mutual friends...
- If you do, send msg to mutual friend and ask him/her if they know who the third person is... Of course, this works only if you know mutual friend personally...
- If you don't have any mutual friends (which rings an early warning bell for me) go on to the next steps...
2. Look at their profile picture. If it's celebrity, famous athlete, fictional character from cartoons and games, pet or anything similar it is highly possible it's fake profile...
3. Try to access picture gallery and see other pics...
- If gallery is open for public and there are pictures of real persons who are mutually tagged it might be real person...
- If gallery is open for public but there are only public domain pictures (cars, places, nature, etc) it's not a good sign...
- If galleries are closed for public there's nothing you can do about it. It doesn't mean anything and can't be taken as fact because many real people close profiles to save their privacy.
4. Check out their friends...
- If there are thousands of friends there's big chance it is fake profile made for spamming people...
5. Check out their interests...
- If there are sex-related interests and groups it is possible it is fake profile... Let's think about it for second, would you join groups of this sort or write you're looking for one night stand and that you are horny at your real profile where you have family, friends, colleagues and others as friends? Most wouldn't...
6. Check out when profile was opened (if profile is not closed for public)...
- You can do this by simply seeing when first activity of profile occurred... For some profiles this might take some time tho, because you'll have to do a lot of scrolling :) But that's good thing, because at the same time you can see profile activity...
- If you see person you're checking opened profile just recently but already has hundreds of friends it might be fake profile...
- Most of us add lots of people in first week or two after we join some network - family, real life friends, colleagues, etc... If you see your "new to be friend" keeps adding lots of people every few days and he opened account long time ago it is probably a fake profile.
7. Last but not least, check them out at ProfileInspector.com :) atm we have over 10.000 fake profiles from various social networks and big dating sites in our databases, and we add new ones all the time...
1. First of all, check out if you have mutual friends...
- If you do, send msg to mutual friend and ask him/her if they know who the third person is... Of course, this works only if you know mutual friend personally...
- If you don't have any mutual friends (which rings an early warning bell for me) go on to the next steps...
2. Look at their profile picture. If it's celebrity, famous athlete, fictional character from cartoons and games, pet or anything similar it is highly possible it's fake profile...
3. Try to access picture gallery and see other pics...
- If gallery is open for public and there are pictures of real persons who are mutually tagged it might be real person...
- If gallery is open for public but there are only public domain pictures (cars, places, nature, etc) it's not a good sign...
- If galleries are closed for public there's nothing you can do about it. It doesn't mean anything and can't be taken as fact because many real people close profiles to save their privacy.
4. Check out their friends...
- If there are thousands of friends there's big chance it is fake profile made for spamming people...
5. Check out their interests...
- If there are sex-related interests and groups it is possible it is fake profile... Let's think about it for second, would you join groups of this sort or write you're looking for one night stand and that you are horny at your real profile where you have family, friends, colleagues and others as friends? Most wouldn't...
6. Check out when profile was opened (if profile is not closed for public)...
- You can do this by simply seeing when first activity of profile occurred... For some profiles this might take some time tho, because you'll have to do a lot of scrolling :) But that's good thing, because at the same time you can see profile activity...
- If you see person you're checking opened profile just recently but already has hundreds of friends it might be fake profile...
- Most of us add lots of people in first week or two after we join some network - family, real life friends, colleagues, etc... If you see your "new to be friend" keeps adding lots of people every few days and he opened account long time ago it is probably a fake profile.
7. Last but not least, check them out at ProfileInspector.com :) atm we have over 10.000 fake profiles from various social networks and big dating sites in our databases, and we add new ones all the time...
