What the fake? My new Twitter follower who isn’t real

A few quick tips on some of the giveaways that can help you spot fake accounts

The technology for creating fakes is getting better all the time. And a determined and resourceful faker can make life very difficult for you. But sometimes there are giveaways that make it a bit easier. This post is a quick run through a few examples that came up when I got a new Twitter follower on May 17.

I got this notification that a person called “Brenda Henley” had just followed me. Now, maybe I’ve been doing this stuff a bit too long, but the instant I clicked on the account a little flag popped up in my head.

The string of numbers is often a hint that there may have been automation involved in the creation of an account — but it was the photo that caught my attention. It was initially a gut reaction, a feeling that it somehow resembled artificial images created by a popular website. I decided to check the full-size “photo”: