Keeping Up with the Kardashians. . . And Their Fake Instagram Accounts

Celebrity baby has over 20 fake Instagram accounts…and you might have them too.

By Joshlin Sheridan, Marketing —

Newborn, New Account

The birth of reality T.V. star Kylie Jenner’s baby girl, Stormi, has created quite the storm. Within a few hours of Kylie Jenner posting a picture of her newborn on Instagram, it became Instagram’s most liked post ever. However, this isn’t the only picture of the Stormi gaining popularity on Instagram.
Thousands of followers have been misled by fake Instagram accounts all claiming to be the “real” account for Stormi Jenner. In fact, one fake account, @stormijenner, has over 75,000 followers. Yet, this page is not endorsed by her mother or father; they don’t even follow the page!

The Reality about Fake Accounts

While this practice of creating fake accounts for celebrities may seem harmless, it has some dangerous repercussions. These accounts often use pictures illegally ripped from other sites and Instagram accounts in order to generate more followers. Once an account has a large number of followers, they can become profitable by advertizing various products on their pages.

The creation of fake accounts isn’t a problem unique to celebrities. Companies such as Devumi are notorious for creating and selling fake accounts to Twitter users. Unfortunately, these are often patterned after real people’s accounts. This puts regular people in jeopardy of having their name and pictures circulated to promote products, celebrities, or pornography. How can social media platforms ensure that its users are who they claim to be?

How to Ensure Identity Verification

IdentityDetect™ provides identity verification by analyzing responses and mouse, keyboard, or screen interactions when the subject is answering questions. IdentityDetect verifies identity within three minutes, and that small amount of time would be invaluable in ensuring that when someone makes a social media account, they are actually the person that they claim to be.

Could a product such as IdentityDetect be the future of verifying real social media accounts?

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Photo by / Erik Lucatero