Verge video director Christian Mazza is an active Instagram user with 571 followers, posting as @mazza. But recently he discovered something weird: a copycat Instagram account, @eastlaine, that looked exactly like him. The account's avatar was Mazza's face, copied from his real account. Its first photo was a shot of Verge editor David Pierce, also copied from Mazza's real account. It even had the same exact caption: "Early calls with @piercedavid and @joplinger #bts."
Mazza found out about @eastlaine because the duplicate caption had tagged his friends again, sending them a notification. Confused, they asked him if he'd made a new account.
Even weirder, Mazza's fiance was also targeted the same way. A new account had popped up with her face and one of her photos, with the caption transcribed exactly.
What does someone get out of impersonating you on Instagram? My gf and I have been targeted. Disregard any new follows/tags from 'me'.
— Christian Mazza (@ChristianMazza) September 2, 2014 While there have been many reports of fake accounts on Instagram, such as the lottery winner scam or the jerk who stole William Shatner's username, this type of indiscriminate impersonation hasn't yet been reported on.
Unlike the fake lottery winners, these spammers aren't trying to rip anyone off. And unlike the Shatner impersonator, they aren't motivated by celebrity obsession.
They're just pretending to be human.
Ahaha there are people on Instagram impersonating me. My life is complete. pic.twitter.com/RmRVEeilyP
— Ashley Lauren (@sweetohiolass) September 2, 2014
This type of spam is already common on other social media platforms, says Satnam Narang, a researcher with Symantec. "I’ve had someone impersonate me on Twitter," he says. "They didn't do much, just tweeting random crap."
These accounts are probably part of the black market for fake social media followers, Narang says.
Like Twitter followers and Facebook fans, fake Instagram followers can be bought in bulk. Prices range from $3 per 100 to $3 per 1,000, depending on the source. There is a similar market for Instagram likes.
Buyers may be minor celebrities; professional photographers who think having more followers will get them more business; social media consultants who want to look like they know what they're talking about; or people just looking for an ego boost.
These accounts are probably part of the black market for fake followers
In order to sell follows and likes, spammers must control legions of accounts. It's tough to construct 1,000 fake personas, so these spammers seem to have taken a shortcut. By aping a real account word for word, photo for photo, they can put on a pretty good act.
If you look at the fake accounts, their followers, and who they’re following, some patterns emerge. Most of the fake accounts tend to follow thousands of people and don’t have many followers themselves. A subset of the accounts they are following have more than 10,000, and sometimes 100,000 followers. These larger accounts, like this one for @nfengphoto, are probably the ones buying fake followers.
"I don't know if anyone would actually admit to buying followers," Narang says. "But it looks more and more likely that this may be the case, and that these impersonation accounts are being created to possibly evade any filters that Instagram has in place to detect spam activity."
The fake Christian Mazza.
The real Christian Mazza.
The spammers didn't seem to realize that copying captions word for word would alert the real user's friends, however.
"It's reposting my real photos with the same captions. One of the captions mentioned my friend, and he was notified and told me," says Mario Moretto, whose account was also copied. "Fake account seems to be brand new and — so far — mostly harmless. Just weird."
For users who don't tag friends in their photo captions, the scam is probably working pretty well. And while it may not be hurting the victims directly, Instagram identity theft is just plain creepy.
SOMEONE MADE AN INSTAGTAM ACCOUNT USING MY PICTURES pic.twitter.com/Gh6MuayGZ0
— Andrea (@AndreaAnabel) September 2, 2014
"To limit the spam you see on our service, we prohibit the creation of fraudulent accounts and use a set of systems that work to flag and block suspicious accounts used for spam," an Instagram spokesperson said in an email. "You can also report these accounts using the report links we provide in our apps and on our site."
After The Verge contacted Instagram about this story, Mazza and his fiance's impersonator accounts were deleted. But if you're reporting a spam clone, be prepared to prove who you are: Instagram requires you to send in a photo of a government ID.