It’s no surprise that many people who created online profiles are not who they claim to be. This is found not only in various online dating websites, but also on popular social media sites such as MySpace and Facebook. No one likes to be taken in by these people who are misrepresenting who they are. Sometimes it can be a mere annoyance to encounter these people, but other times it can become a more serious problem. Therefore, it’s crucial to be able to identify fake online profiles so that you don’t fall victim to any unwanted scams.
Be Cautious of Fake Online Profiles
There have people who have been taken for their money by people using fake profiles, others who have suffered heartache and humiliation from falling for someone who wasn’t who they claimed to be. Other times, people have even lost their lives by falling victim to one of these offenders. It pays to use caution when communicating with new people online, for dating purposes, friendship, or other reasons.
Here are some useful tips on how to identify fake online profiles that can help you determine if the person you’re interacting with is really who they say they are.
1) Check Out The Photos
One of the first things that grabs the attention is seeing someone’s photo(s). If the first photo you see happens to be the only photo visible in their profile or on their Facebook page, ask to view others. In the case of a real person, they will most likely be happy to send you another photo. If other photos are available on their profile page, it may be a red flag if they look “model perfect” in every shot, as most people have a few less than perfect photos posted. If things appear too good to be true, that this incredibly good looking person is just so photogenic and has a few well posed photographs, be suspicious.
2) People Posing As Famous People
Another thing to look out for are fake profiles of those who pretend to be celebrities.
For example, let’s use a make believe famous person we’ll call “Jim Famous”. Say this guy is a well known movie actor with a huge fan base. If you happen to find Jim on Facebook, and he only has 20 “friends”, chances are this is not the real Jim!
However, if you found a page where you can “like” the page as opposed to being added as a friend, or if you can be added as a friend and there are approximately 300,000 other “friends”, you probably have the right profile.
Most famous people will have an “official” page or profile, with a link to another website or affiliation. Don’t fall for the scammers, you never can be sure as to why they might want to lure people to them by pretending to be who they are not. With social media attacks being one of the biggest cyber threats last year, it pays to be cautious.
3) Be Cautious Of Low Friend Count
On social media sites, even those who are not celebrities tend to have approximately 100 or more friends. Obviously, if the person just created their profile, they may need some time to reach this number.
If someone you don’t know personally sends you a friend request or otherwise tries to contact you, be cautious. Check to see how many friends they have, and then look even further to see if any of their friends are mutual friends with each other.
Also, when approached online by an unknown stranger, check to see if they have extremely poor grammar or if their messages don’t make much sense. For example, if this person claims to be an English professor and can’t even write/speak the language, be wary, they are probably a fake.
Read also: Political Leaders With The Most Number of Fake Twitter Followers
4) Be Cautious Of Someone Who Is Far Too Interesting
When someone’s profile is loaded with talk of achievements or hobbies and interests that seem almost unrealistic, be cautious.
It’s most likely someone who claims to be a model, surgeon, Harvard graduate, and world traveler all in one is stretching the truth or just flat out lying. It may be possible to Google their name or their achievements to see if any information shows up that might validate their claims.
If you cannot find any proof they are who they say they are, for example, if they claim to be the head surgeon at such and such hospital, but you check the hospital website and find no one on staff with that name, you can probably assume you’re dealing with a fake.
5) Look For Ways To Validate That The Profile Is Who They Really Are
Before becoming too friendly with someone online or meeting them in person, take the effort to ask questions they should be able to answer, and to dig a little deeper. With modern technology, a face to face chat is just a click away through Face Time or video chat resources. After a little time has passed, suggest doing this form of communication. If they are truly who they say they are, they will likely not offer any objections. This is also a great way to make sure they are really who they say they are.
How to Identify Fake Online Profiles: Wrap up
Not everyone you encounter online has a fake profile, but it is nice to know how to weed out those who do from the rest of the people you meet. Play it safe and use caution as well as good old fashioned common sense.
To wrap up, here’s how to identify fake online profiles:
- Check Out The Photos
- People Posing As Famous People
- Be Cautious Of Low Friend Count
- Be Cautious Of Someone Who Is Far Too Interesting
- Look For Ways To Validate That The Profile Is Who They Really Are
[Image credit: EnCHiLi, Flickr]
I think we must run a background check on the profile without blindly believing in the information provided.
The post is really insightful. Thanks for sharing.
Any particular suggestions on how to run a background check on the profile, Devinder?
Instantcheckmate(.)com is the one tool that i know can help with this. Apart from that, there are various reputation management tools that can alternatively be used as background check tools.
I’ve heard of that site but never got the chance to try it out. Thanks for mentioning that here, Devinder.
I had read somewhere on the Internet that Facebook has most fake profiles from India and Turkey. So being a blogger and an entrepreneur I do come across a lot of fake profiles.
The three ways to identify fake profiles in India is
1. If the profile has more than 1500 friends then its definitely a fake.
2. If the facebook profile user never makes a post then its fake.
3. If there are no photos from friends and family then I do feel its fake.
There isn’t any rocket science to identifying fake profiles I guess everyone’s gut knows who is fake on social media.
The number of Facebook friends can be a tricky parameter. A genuine marketer can actually hit the thousands if he is an enthusiastic FB marketer, and yet a spammer could also produce similar results. I do however think that the amount of his posts, and personal photos give a much better gauge of his genuinety. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Abhishek!
A video chat is a one of the more reassuring ways to verify someone if you intend to meet up with him or her in person. Blind dates can be fun, and if you do decide that the person is trustworthy enough to meet up, it definitely pays to play safe by insisting on a crowded public area in the broad daylight!
Well said, Elnora! It’s always good to make sure that the person you are going to meet is a real person, especially if you are going for a blind date via services from dating websites. Video chat is one of the ways.
Hello Peter,
The tips you provide above are very useful for a Facebook profile but what about such Google+ profiles. How to find the meaningful profiles on Google?
Fake profiles exists only if there are lot of users and if we compare active users on Facebook and Google+ then the number is quite large on large. There are almost 1.19 Billion active users on Facebook. The best thing here would be do not trust or talk with anyone you don’t know in real life.
The rule of thumb is always check if they have other photos uploaded besides the profile pic and also how active are they when it comes to updating their social media. This applied to all social media, including Google+ 🙂
Having a Fake profile is becoming like a trend but it all useless. It not gonna help until you are detected. I often try to look at the background and history of every new request in my Facebook. And I easily detect whether its fake or not. Well you have written the important hing that I often use to determine a fake profile
You have a great weekend Peter 🙂
Oftentimes, experience will make one detect a fake with ease 🙂
I remember a while back I was reading about a fake Matt Cutts going around leaving comments on blogs with his gravatar image. The person was actually leaving seo advice and such. It was kind of funny that someone even do something like that, but nothing surprises me on the internet anymore.
I used to rely on review types of sites in the earlier internet days. Back then, they did seem honest, legit, and likely real people. But, now today, I believe a lot of them are fake and possibly they paid someone to boost their ratings. I have pretty much given up on these now.
I receive many guest posts from people using fake Google+ profiles at least a few times per week. Many claim to be well known writers and bloggers who write for sites such as TechCrunch and Mashable. However, their profiles are empty without any photos, posts and activities at all when I checked them. Needless to say, their guest posts will end up in my trash immediately of course.
This is great advice. It’s important to take profile information with a grain of salt. It’s far too easy for someone to fake a profile and draw people in through their lies. I find doing a reverse image search helps weed out the phonies.
That’s an excellent suggestion Steve. A reverse image search helps to identify online sources of people’s profile pictures, which gives us a huge clue to their authenticity.
The first thing that I usually look at are the photos. If the profile is using a photo of a famous personality or have very few photos in a site like Facebook, then it is most probably a fake one.
It is actually tempting for a poser to use a gorgeous, conspicuous celebrity photo as their profile to make themselves look professional. But at the same time, they can be the easiest to rule out, such as a celebrity that ironically has no subscribers.
Not to forget checking the year they made account. If their age is more than 17 and account is made after 2013, there are very high chances the account is FAKE!
I own a fashion blog and wanted to start a partnership with a girl I started following on Instagram because she had a great style but it turned out that ALL her pictures were stolen from another account, hashtags included.
When I asked her to call me on SKYPE she backed out so I started felling suspicious. I did a Google image search and found the real account on Pinterest. Whenever you feel something might be wrong, ask to do a video call or search for that image to see if you can find it somewhere else.
All networking platforms are full of fake profiles so it’s better to take extra precautions.