Trying to figure out if that new account you’ve seen lurking on Instagram is fact or Finsta? As spammers and scammers alike become more sophisticated, it’s not an easy task – but knowing how to weed out the fakes is an extremely beneficial skill to have if you want to keep your account safe.
Thankfully, there are still a few red flags that an Instagram account is fake. So you can rest easy at night, we’ve put together a go-to guide to fake Instagrams in 2024, including the potential risks of interacting with fraudulent accounts, how to know if an Instagram account is fake, and what to do once you’ve identified the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing.
What is a fake Instagram account?
A fake Instagram account is a potentially dangerous, often ‘spammy’ account on the platform that is impersonating a popular user or pretending to be a real person. Fake Instagrams (once known as Finstas – an abbreviation of the portmanteau ‘Finstagram’) are becoming increasingly more prolific as the overall number of Instagram users grows and activity on the platform becomes harder to moderate.
Fake Instagram accounts might seem harmless, but that’s far from the case, especially as we begin to share more of our sensitive data online. We’ll break down the signs and symptoms of fraud Instagrams in a moment, but common motives for having a Finsta include anonymously consuming or interacting with content (often in a nasty way – AKA trolling), driving traffic to specific accounts en masse, impersonating celebrities or influencers for financial gain, or eliciting personal information from users in order to hack them.
For personal users and businesses alike, losing access to an account via hacking is cause for serious concern. Potential threats include:
- Decline in engagement: If your account is hacked, it’s likely they’ll use it to post spammy content that pushes their agenda (think fake financial trading and sexually explicit links). This will undoubtedly tank your metrics, which can have major implications for the future of your account should you be able to regain access.
- Loss of personal data: Many of us freely give our personal information away when signing up for social media accounts, including our commonly used passwords, our date of birth, location, and even credit card details. Losing access to this information can be catastrophic, and has been in the past for many individuals and brands.
- Impact on credibility: We’re all quite socially astute these days, and many of us can pick a hacked account from a mile away. If your account is visibly hacked and your followers catch on, you’ll run the risk of losing them in droves, which will have flow-on effects for your brand reputation.
- Inability to regain access to your account: The worst-case scenario for many of us is losing access to our social accounts for good – and the leap from finding a Finsta to being locked out of your Instagram isn’t as big as you might think, so it pays to know how to stay safe!
How to tell if an Instagram account is fake
Sign 1: Their Instagram bio is hard to read
Bio full of misspelled words, special characters, and dodgy-looking links? You may have found your very first Insta-scammer.
Fake Instagram accounts often lift and shift their bios from popular creators and then make tweaks to the content, but their edits leave a lot to be desired. In some cases, fake Instagram accounts may use AI-generated bios that come off as clunky, forced, or just a little… odd.
This bio has fake Instagram account written all over it thanks to irrelevant special characters and clunky copywriting.
Pay attention to other elements of their profile, too, as these could provide additional context clues. Fake Instagram accounts often have strange or nonsensical bio links, which may be a sign they’re actually phishing links designed to capture sensitive personal data.
Sign 2: You receive spammy DMs or tags from the account
Ever been tapped to become an ambassador for an unknown brand via DM? Or, perhaps you’ve woken up to 10 new Instagram tags, only to find they’re from a random user with no followers and 100 iterations of the same image published to their profile. Yep, you guessed it – this is another dead giveaway you’re dealing with a fake Instagram account.
Being DMed or tagged in a pic by an unknown account is often an indication you’re dealing with a scammer or a bot, like this ‘assignment writer’ almost certainly is.
There are heaps of different scams going around that aim to lure in users via tag or DM, but common ones include crypto trading, product or follower giveaways, assignment and essay help, brand ambassadorship, dating sites, and explicit content. Once they’ve made it out of your message requests, these accounts often try to solicit your personal data, like passwords and bank details.
Just one glance at the above image tells us everything we need to know. It’s grainy, uses a generic stock photo, and is absolutely full of spelling and grammatical errors. If you visit the user’s profile, there are even more signs it’s fake, including captionless posts, images that have obviously been stolen from other profiles, and an unbalanced follower-to-following ratio.
Looking at this profile, there are a few giveaways it’s a fake Instagram account, including poor quality images and a low follower to following ratio.
Sign 3: The account leaves random comments and emojis on posts
We’ve all seen comments to the effect of ‘SEND P!C >>>’ (or worse, an unintelligible combination of emojis) on Instagram. They’re random, confusing, and seemingly have no purpose – but did you know they’re also a pretty good indicator that the commenter is a fake Instagram account?
Send pic’ or ‘DM us’ scams are extremely common – and they’re also a telltale sign of a fake Instagram account.
In this case, @alizaa__55 is a fake Instagram account – quite likely a bot that’s been engaged by the brand in question to promote their product or services automatically and prolifically.
While social media is still rife with bots like this one, it’s perhaps the worst strategy you can employ to grow your Instagram following, as clued-in users can spot the fake from a mile away.
Sign 4: The account is promoting quick ways to make money
If there’s someone in your DMs or comment section touting a too-good-to-be-true Bitcoin deal or free product giveaway, chances are they’re trying to take you for a ride. Get rich quick schemes are still all the rage with Insta-spammers, and unfortunately, there’s still a small section of people that struggle to distinguish fake from reality.
Some fake Instagram accounts running monetary scams will pose as influencers or brands currently running a giveaway, like this account that’s impersonating fitness content creator Bec Hardgrave.
Fake Instagram accounts often impersonate influencers, like they’ve done here with fitness content creator Bec Hardgrave, to run giveaway scams.
In this case, you can tell the Instagram account is fake for a few reasons – it’s private (poor choice for an influencer), it has zero posts, it doesn’t include a name or personalized bio, and the bio content is emoji-laden and focused entirely on the giveaway, rather than on Bec’s fitness-based persona.
Sign 5: The account has a lower follower count, but follows thousands of users
Fake Instagram accounts often follow users en masse in a bid to build their following and have a broader pool of people to scam, but this tactic is usually ineffectual, resulting in an unbalanced follower-to-following ratio. So, when you’re trying to determine whether an account is legitimate or fake, always look at how many followers they’ve got and how that compares to the number of accounts they are following.
The number of posts they’ve published may also indicate whether an account is fake. After all, Instagram is still a photo- and video-sharing app, so a profile free of posts definitely sets off alarm bells.
Sign 6: The account is ‘hiding’ behind a grey icon or is on private
A private account with no profile pic? Houston, we have a problem. Fake Instagram accounts regularly hide behind profiles with little to no visible information, instead choosing to do all of their dirty work in your DMs or the comment sections of other users’ posts.
By doing this, scammers are making themselves much less identifiable, which in turn makes it hard to confirm whether they’re legit or a fake account, and lets them keep their cover for longer.
A private account with no profile picture is almost guaranteed to be a fake Instagram account, whether that’s a traditional Finsta or something more sinister.
Note that this may also be a sign the account in question is a burner or lurker account, rather than a bot or a malicious account trying to steal personal data. It’s common practice for people to create these anonymized accounts to comment on others’ posts without consequences, unknowingly follow people (like exes or enemies), or consume NSFW content.
How to block a fake Instagram account
The swiftest way to keep your profile safe against a fake Instagram account is to be proactive and block them, which you can do in just a few simple steps.
1. Navigate to the fake Instagram account’s profile.
2. Hit the three dots at top right.
3. Select ‘Block’.
4. A dialog box will open explaining the implications of blocking a user.
5. Select from ‘Block’ or ‘Block and report’. We recommend picking the latter option when dealing with a spam account, as this will increase the likelihood of them getting removed from Instagram and causing more issues for other users.
Once you’ve identified a fake Instagram account, the best course of action is to block them, which you can do in just a few quick steps.
Top tips for staying safe on Instagram
In addition to blocking suspicious accounts, there are a few other ways to keep your sensitive data tight and your sanity in check while using Instagram, whether that’s for business or personal reasons.
- Always do an account audit: When you’re interacting with a new account and have doubts about their legitimacy, conduct a mini audit of their profile, keeping the signs of scammers we’ve outlined top of mind.
- Stay away from suspicious links: To make sure your personal data isn’t at risk of being mined, don’t click on any links you don’t trust when navigating Instagram (or any other website or social media app, for that matter).
- Make the most of Instagram’s built-in anti-spam features: Instagram has employed a number of features over the years to minimize spam ‘n’ scam activity on the platform, including hidden comments and message requests. These will automatically filter out interactions from users that could be dodgy.
- Don’t engage with untrustworthy accounts: While it might be tempting to embark on a new career as an IG cryptocurrency trader or brand ambassador, the easiest way to stay safe is to ignore messages, comments, and tags from fake Instagram accounts.
- Remove spam comments from your posts: From an optics perspective, it’s not a good look if your posts are plastered with spam comments. Keep your brand’s reputation strong by removing spammy comments soon after they’re received.
- When in doubt, restrict or block: If a seemingly suspicious account is harassing you, or you just want to minimize potential harm, don’t hesitate to limit their access to you and your content. You can do this by restricting them or blocking them altogether.
- Report the user: Wondering how to report a fake Instagram account? Simply head to their profile, hit the three dots at the top right, and select ‘Report’.
- Keep your wits about you: The more vigilant you are in your social media use, the better protected you’ll be against popular scams run by fake Instagram accounts.
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