Your brand account or the account of a brand you follow has been copied. What should you do?

It’s unfortunately really common to see this. You follow a brand you like and after a couple of days you are followed by a private account with the same profile image and a really similar name. It’s never a real account.

Remember this: a brand never creates a private account and follows you, if not explicitly said.
Why should I, brand that want to sell to a lot of people, create a private account? And why should I create another one when I already have a functioning one?

So, never follow back and never click on their links!

What should you do instead?

You should report it and block it. Impersonating somebody else is illegal and it’s against the terms of services of most social media platforms. Reporting such an account can help protect both you and the original brand from any potential harm or damage to their reputation.

You can only chose the option “it is impersonating somebody else” if the original account has the blue tick.
So you can alternatively chose “Other” and then “Fake information”.

Can reporting the fake account affect also the original one?

It is unlikely that Instagram would cancel the original, real profile of a brand when investigating an impersonating account.

However, it’s possible that if the original account is found to be in violation of the platform’s terms of services or community guidelines, it could result in consequences for the account.

So if the original account has no problems, nothing should happen to it.

How to recognize a fake brand account?

• there’s a mistake in the name
• In the profile there’s not the link to the website
• In the profile they talk about a Giveway or something you may win
• the account is private

Why do people create such fake accounts?

We don’t know precisely but there can be many reasons:

• scams and phishing: they can trick you to reveal sensitive information or to give them money
• spam: sending spam messages to promote something
• hacking: to gain access to other accounts
• collecting real followers: after collecting a number of real followers they change their profile and become something else. They can become one of the millions of fake followers people can buy and with real followers they will seem real to Instagram.

How do you protect yourself?

• verify every account that follows you before following back
• use two-factor authentication, I created many posts on Instagram about this important passage
• report fake accounts

What can you do as a brand?

Sometimes these fake accounts block the original one, so you cannot see them. Only your followers can see them and tell you something.

So it’s important that sometimes you invite your followers to report potential fake accounts if they see one. Assure them that you will never create another account.

If you think about it, the only reason you may create another account is if you loose the one you already have.
So please, be really careful! Always follows the terms of services of the social media platforms and switch on the two-factor authentication.

It’s really important to pay attention on Instagram, because fake accounts in general can be dangerous for you.
Of course if they just follow you and you don’t follow back, and you don’t do any action, nothing happens.

But reporting them it’s a good action you can do in order to prevent them to harm other people.