Fake Instagram account - How to recognize and avoid them?

On Instagram, fake accounts have become popular. But they can impact your growth and your earnings. So you need to avoid fake accounts on the social network at all costs. Here's how.

Fake Instagram account - How to recognize and avoid them?
Emeric
Senior Content Writer @ BoostFluence
Social Media
November 22, 2022

Fake accounts on Instagram are perhaps the biggest nuisance for the social network and its users.

The social network has millions of fake Instagram accounts and is constantly hunting them down. Even the app's biggest stars and influencers are followed by thousands or even millions of fake accounts.

But what can you do as Instagram users? How can you recognize a fake Instagram account and avoid them? That's what we're going to look at together in this article.

Why you absolutely must avoid fake Instagram accounts?

First of all, make sure you understand why you absolutely must avoid having fake accounts in your community.

To succeed on Instagram, develop a real community and eventually earn remuneration from your Instagram account. You need to meet 2 criteria:

  1. Have the highest number of Instagram followers.
  2. Have the most engaged community possible.

The higher these two, the more likely your account is to succeed.

Or having false followers in your community, lowers your engagement rate. Simply because they're not active with your publications.

This means that the more, you have fake accounts in your audience:

  • The less expensive you can sell your sponsored publications.
  • The more your Instagram statistics will be skewed.
  • The harder it will be for you to be featured by the Instagram algorithm.

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It's for all these reasons that you need to remove all fake accounts from your network. But then how do you recognize and remove them? That's what we'll look at in the rest of this article.

fake instagram account

How to recognize a fake Insta account

A fake Instagram account is recognizable in a number of ways. There are many things that can tell you that this profile is a fake account.

Inappropriate or missing profile photo

A fake profile will often not have a real profile photo. In fact, most of these accounts don't even have one. So you may want to take the time to check this criterion.

If an account follows you, you don't know its owner and it doesn't have a profile photo, check the following criteria before removing it from your Instagram followers.

Its username is hard to read (with extra numbers or letters)

The username is unique to each account. To invent a fake name, you therefore need to redouble your imagination.

The method used by his fake accounts, use a name that already exists as a base then multiply certain letters, add symbols or numbers to make it unique.

If his username gathers these criteria, there's a good chance that this account is fake.

Absence of Insta bio

The absence of an Insta bio can also say a lot.

Rarely any real Instagram profiles don't take the time to personalize their insta bio. Fake accounts don't bother.

If your profile therefore has no Instagram bio or a very generalist bio or one that doesn't connect with the rest of its content, run away from that account.

This also works for including a link to a website under your bio.

No or few posts

The feed Instagram is certainly the first thing you look at on a profile. Well, if it's a fake account, you probably won't see anything.

A fake Instagram profile often has no posts. If, however, a few photos and videos are present, make sure they're consistent. Check the quality of the photos, whether they include descriptions, tags or talk about the person who manages the account.

So keep an eye on the number of posts from an account you may think is fake.

Also, if the account includes publications, chances are they're unrelated to each other and frequently advertise one or more services or products.

If an account, which is not a brand, has only 3 posts that advertise another product or service, you can consider it fake.

example fake instagram account

Its number of subscriptions is much higher than its number of subscribers

A fake account is often used in the sale of Instagram subscribers. Its primary mission is to subscribe to accounts that have paid to buy subscribers. Then there's a good chance that this account follows hundreds or thousands of people, but isn't followed by anyone.

If you see that its number of subscriptions is really greater than its subscribers, there's a good chance that this account is a fake account.

It doesn't speak your language

Finally, another clue to detect if an account is fake is to look at the language it uses. Whether it's in his bio or his messages. If this person doesn't contact you in the same language as you, there's a good chance that this profile isn't authentic.

With all this information, you'll be able to detect accounts that aren't genuine on the social network much more easily. However, take the trouble to analyze all this data so you don't delete the account of a real subscriber to your Insta page.

Why are there so many fake accounts and what are they for?

If you're wondering why there are so many fake Instagram profiles on social networks. Here are the 2 main causes:

  1. The workings of certain Instagram bots
  2. Follower buying

These 2 systems are constantly creating new accounts so they can sell their services.

When it comes to follower buying, people pay to have a certain number of subscribers on their profile. These new subscribers are fake accounts.

achat followers instagram

When it comes to bots, it's a little different. Users pay these sites to automate the actions of their accounts, and attract new profiles.

But with Instagram automation becoming more and more complicated, some services to ensure their sales promise add fictitious subscribers to their clients' accounts.

We recommend that you choose the sites you work with carefully. Any service that promises you a certain number of subscribers over a set period of time is certainly using fake accounts.

Note, however, that not all bots are like this, some have managed to update their service in relation to Instagram updates and still work very well.

Boostfluence in particular is constantly testing to ensure the safety and results of its customers. Test for yourself.

How to remove all the fake accounts from your current followers

But then how to remove all the fake profiles from your Instagram account?

Unfortunately, there are no miracle methods for removing all the fake accounts following you in one fell swoop.

Instagram deletes thousands of them every day, but the lines between fake and underdeveloped accounts are often thin.

To remove all the accounts that follow you and that you consider fake, you'll have to check your subscriber list and delete any accounts that seem suspicious one by one.

This may seem time-consuming and repetitive, but as seen at the beginning of this article, the fewer fake accounts you have in your community, the more valuable your account will be. It's also by going through this step that you'll be able to develop your influence on the social network.

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