A few days ago, I woke up to a follow request on my Instagram account. At first glance, the account looked normal. It had a generic profile photo of a woman in her 20s, a name, as well as 253 followers and 165 followings.
Since the account didn’t resemble a typical catfish, bot, or scam, I was at first inclined to approve this request. But one big red flag stopped me from doing so. Throughout the day, I kept checking the account, debating whether I’m just being paranoid. But by the next morning, it had vanished from Instagram, likely suspended.
My suspicions were more or less confirmed. Had I accepted this follow request, I might have become a victim of a scam, blackmail, or a hacking attempt.
This article will discuss four red flags to look out for to filter out suspicious individuals trying to follow you on social media. With the rise of AI, it’s become even more important to be selective of who gets to access details about your personal life that you reveal through your posts and who you follow.
#1. Mutual friends
The first thing that stood out to me about this account was the lack of any mutual friends. Meaning, there were no people that I followed that also followed this account. Subsequently, this raised a question: “how did this person find my account?”
Follow requests from people who you have mutual friends with are normal. It’s one of the primary ways the algorithm connects people. By looking at who your friends follow, and recommending that you follow them as well.
But if you ever get a random follow request from someone who you have no mutual friends with, and have not met in real life, ask yourself how this person may have found your account in the first place.
If there’s a plausible explanation, then the follow request can easily be explained. Maybe you left a comment under a post, and your comment got hundreds of likes. Maybe you were recently tagged in a photo by your friend, and that post gained popularity.
If you can’t find a plausible explanation, it’s possible that they were either selecting randomly, or targeting specific demographics which you may have been a part of.
For example, romance scam victims “tend to be middle-aged, well-educated women” according to research, while sextortion scams typically target “males between the ages of 14 to 17” according to the FBI.
#2. Wait some time
Even when targeting specific demographics, scammers tend to cast a wide net when looking for victims. It’s a tactic that experts call “spray-and-pray,” where fake accounts follow many people, or send out volumes of texts and emails, hoping that at least a certain percentage of them will get a response.
In other words, if the person who requested to follow you is indeed a scammer or a bad actor, you’re likely not the only person they targeted.
Subsequently, if they’re targeting other people, those people are likely to report the account, leading to the scammer being suspended from the platform. If after a few days, you notice the account disappear from the platform, it’s possible that they were suspended for breaking the terms of service, and you may have dodged a bullet.
#3. Monitor the account
As mentioned previously, scammers tend to “spray-and-pray” to get victims. By monitoring their follower and following counts, you can get an idea of what might be going on with this account behind the scenes.
If their follower numbers are dropping rapidly, it might indicate that they’ve purchased fake “bot”followers, and their followers count is going down due to the bots being suspended. Alternatively, the account could be hacked, and the original owner may be telling their friends to report and unfollow the hacked page.
If the number of their followings increases, it’s possible that in addition to you, the account also requested to follow many other people within a short period of time. Some of those people may be accepting the request, leading to the followings number rapidly going up.
There may very well be legitimate reasons for someone’s followers / followings count to fluctuate within a short period. Therefore, this should only be considered a red flag when seen in combination with other suspicious behaviors.
#4. Reverse image search
Catfish accounts and scammers often pose as other people so as to not reveal their real identities while scamming people. A good way to figure out whether there is a real person behind an account is to download their profile picture and run a reverse image search on Google, Tineye, Bing, or other search engines.
If the exact photo shows up on other websites, and their name is listed as something different on those websites, then there’s a very high probability that the person who requested to follow you is not who they say they are.
However, keep in mind that if someone is popular enough, has many social media profiles, or have had their posts go viral in the past, their photos may show up elsewhere on the internet. It only becomes a red flag when their name does not match their name on other websites.
If someone who you have no mutual friends with decides to follow you, and you don’t know them in real life, and their photo shows up under a different profile when doing a reverse image search, and you notice rapid changes in their follower / following count, it’s worth being more cautious about approving the follow request.
You are, after all, giving that person access to photos of you, as well as a list of people who know you and who you might be close with.
