Someone Spammed my Account with Followers

If you are an influencer (hate that word!) or a heavy user of Instagram you may know that there is a real problem with accounts buying followers. It’s not illegal but highly frowned upon within the instagram community, the thing is brands and companies look at numbers of followers and approach these accounts for campaigns or gifts in return to be seen by the accounts following but if the following is fake, well have you just committed fraud to make a buck on social media?

You see a higher follower count, or a higher like count, and you assume this person is important, Follower counts are one of the factors social media platforms use and seeing these numbers may influence a person to follow or share.

I have never paid for followers but I did have a well meaning friend try and help me get new followers with disastrous results (ITS A VERY LONG STORY). It resulted in 3 weeks of complete stress and deciding that I was going to ease back on the whole platform and focus more on the fun part, my blog. I actually nearly gave up the whole idea of it all because of it but thank goodness I didn’t or I wouldn’t have gotten the opportunities I have had. (working with BBC radio Scotland and The Nine being just some of them)

Well , someone sent 400 spammy fake accounts to my Instagram and I was close to having a melt down again.

How did I know they were fake and spam? Because one second they weren’t there and the next BAM 400 new followers!!!

These accounts all have funny, random names, maybe just a bunch of letters and numbers. They have no followers, no posts and I have found mostly originate from Asian countries or Russia. As I looked through the accounts, they all were the same. Why would someone do this?

My instagram account is open for anyone to view and it’s like that because I am using it as an advert for my blog. It has my links and my pictures that I post are also relevant to my site. I have been growing quickly; around 30- 40 new followers a day but I end up blocking around half of them because I lot of these accounts are fake or bots. Typically they find you through the hashtags you use and are very annoying for someone like me, they have no benefit on an account as they don’t engage with you at all, and they are like “fillers” just there to bulk up your follower numbers.

Buying followers is a massive business on social media on all the platforms, you just have to Google “buy followers” and you are inundated with websites offering “real followers”. There not though. As the want for followers grows the fake accounts are being harder to spot as fake. Many use technology to copy existing active accounts, coping photos, bios and everything else without the poor person even knowing.

The risks of being followed by a bot outweigh the benefits; some of these bots are out to grab your information, steal your identity and may befriending you so it can send you private messages with spam or phishing attempts- juiceplus anyone?! (jks) It can be much worse than that, these bots that have stolen your identity could be sending offensive material, porn, dick pic’s and something’s that are unthinkable but your face is unknowingly promoting.

Instagram has been taking down fake accounts since at least 2014, but these bots are made faster than Instagram can spot them, so it seems they will be around for a while and with bots becoming harder to spot, even instagrams own bots that are used to find these pests can be foiled.

Some of the most popular bot apps for growing followers like Instagress and Social Growth have been shut down, but others like Archie, InstarocketProX and Boostio charge $10 to $45 per month. They often claim not to violate Instagram’s policies, though they do. The New York times even named and shamed some celebrities that had bought some followers, even the celeb’s couldn’t ignore the urge to have big numbers on the social site. Just because everyone is doing it, doesn’t make it right.

So yeah, it’s nice to see your followers growing but not enough when you think of what you could lose – respect, your identity or *GASP* your actual account! Don’t let these pesky users ruin your fun and remember social media is suppose to be SOCIAL, how can you expect to connect with other if no one is on the other side of these accounts.

At the moment there isn't a foolproof solution to getting rid of bots altogether — report/block one and another just pops up to fill its place. It’s best to do this as some of these bots are after your private information and that's more important than any number of followers.