Could your social media account be spoofed, why would anybody do it, and what can private photo

viewer app
you do to avoid having a doppelgänger?

Social media has some great advantages, such as keeping in touch with loved ones and sharing experiences with
friends, but like almost anything on the internet, it can be easily abused. With some creative thinking and a little
luck on the side, it is possible for it to be used as a vehicle to steal money from unwitting victims.

I had heard stories of account cloning, but I always assumed people would check with the account holder via
another form of communication or at least think twice before sending money to an account they only recently
connected with. Sadly, people are still being caught out with this scam and I want to help reach those who may be
unaware of how the con works.

As with all my ways of getting a security message across, I needed to conduct a little experiment to test this scam
in the real world and see first-hand the ease with which it can work. It’s easier to get your message across about
the risks when they’re shown a real example of the scam working and then they want to better protect their
accounts and themselves. All I needed was a volunteer who would be willing to allow me to set up a cloned
account and then attempt to dupe their friends. However, wow am I quickly running out of friends to con! I looked
far and wide, but no one wanted to play ball on this one.

Therefore, having failed to find someone happy for me to clone their account for the test, I decided I would have
to clone my own Instagram. I follow nearly 900 accounts on Instagram and I am usually posting the same old
seascape photos or pictures of me prancing around at the beach to my 1,400 followers. I decided to make a new
account on my spare phone and took four screenshot copies rather than uploading the originals to make it as
authentic as possible just like someone else would have done it. It was easy to duplicate these images but the only
thing that could have been a difficulty is that when copying the profile picture, it would have needed to have been
posted in the feed to make a quality replica.

I decided to follow 30 of my friends to see if they would follow me back and let the experiment begin. Ten were
private accounts, therefore they required approval, and 20 were public accounts.

Within moments I had three private account owners accept my request and two followed me back. This was a
good start. I was expecting someone to contact me via a different communication method and question this
request, particularly due to my line of work and the embarrassment that I could have been subjected to,
understanding that even I am susceptible to an account compromise!

But no one did. In fact, the numbers increased. Thirteen accounts followed me back on the same day and by the
evening I decided to message these people and see what sort of responses I would receive.

Initially, I mentioned the account compromise and thanked them for accepting the new follow request and then
went in with a request to catch up.