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ONLINE dating is great, right? You can meet someone new without leaving your bed, while sitting on the loo or even when on another date.

But as our lives become ever-more social media dependent - the dark side of online relationships grows.

What is catfishing?

'Catfishing' is when someone creates fake profiles on social media sites to trick people into thinking they are somebody else.

It is most common on social media and dating apps like Tinder.

They make up life stories and use photographs of unsuspecting victims to create fake identities. Catfishers add life experiences, jobs, friends and photographs to the fake accounts.

This can be seen in cases such as young mum Chloe Davis, 20, who began receiving suggestive text messages from men who believed they had chatted with her on Plenty of Fish after someone set up a fake profile in her name.

Where did the term Catfish come from?

The term was first used in the 2010 documentary 'Catfish' - in which Nev Schulman discovered the gorgeous woman he fell in love with online was a middle-aged, married mum.

Schulman fell in love with "Megan" - but also spoke to her mum Angela, half-sister Abby and stepdad Vince online.

At the end of the documentary Schulman discovers "Megan" was a fake account run by Angela using a family friend's photos.

After becoming suspicious Schulman drives to "Megan's" address - and finds Angela, who admits she was behind the account all along.

At the end he tells a story about how live cod were shipped along with catfish to keep the cod active and ensure the quality of the fish.

He uses the metaphor to describe Angela, saying there are always "catfishes" in our lives who keep us alert, active and on our toes.

Schulman later turned the documentary into the 'Catfish' TV show, where he helps others solve their online relationship mysteries.

Are there any recent cases of catfishing?

There are two types of victims - the people who are duped into trusting someone with a false identity, and those who have their personal photos stolen and used by someone that isn't them.

Here are some of the most recent cases of catfishing:

Why do people make fake accounts?

The fake accounts are often used to spark up online relationships.

Unknowing victims will fall in love with women or men they meet online - with no idea the person behind the screen is someone completely different.

Catfishers use the accounts to give off a persona they wish they had - with plenty of friends, photos and attractive qualities.

At the moment, catfishing is not illegal in the UK, but there are many campaigns to make it against the law.

How do I know if I'm being catfished?

Potential victims always have similar concerns.

These include:

Why does he refuse to video chat?

Why is she never able to meet in person?

Why does it seem just to good to be true?

If you are in an online relationship and think any of the above - it could be happening to you.

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The rise of online dating has also seen a surge in catfishing... here's how to spot a dodgy profile

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ONLINE dating is great, right? You can meet someone new without leaving your bed, while sitting on the loo or even when on another date. But as our lives become ever-more social media dependent - the dark side of online relationships grows.

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(Image via MTV)

What is a Catfish?

Catfish is a slang term used to describe someone who creates a false identity online. The term originated from a 2010 U.S documentary, titled Catfish. The film follows a young man who developed an online relationship with a woman, only to find out the person he thought he was communicating with was someone else. Following on from the success of the documentary, MTV now has a hit TV show on MTV with the same name.

Why Do People Catfish?

The term catfishing refers to the process of befriending or chatting with someone online, while using a fake identity. Not all people who catfish do it for malicious reasons. Some people catfish due to self-esteem issues or out of loneliness and some people do it out of sheer boredom. Nevertheless, catfishing can be harmful to people and there can be more sinister motives for the modern phenomenon including:

CyberBullying and Catfishing

Unfortunately, it can be a common occurrence for a catfish to create a false identity for purposes of cyberbullying and trolling. If you are a victim of cyberbullying or are worried about your child being affected, keep a record of any correspondence, block the person and speak to someone you trust about it. It is against the terms of service of many social networks to provide false information or create an account using another person's details and images.

Online Predators and Catfishing

Catfishing can also be a way for online predators to target/befriend children and teens. To help minimise risks, parents should encourage children to be smart online and help them to understand how easy it is to create a false profile online. Remind them always to be wary of accepting friend requests from people they haven't met in real life.

Tips for spotting a Catfish online

Here's a few things to look out for if you are worried someone isn't who they say they are online:

Profile photos - Look out for overly photo-shopped or retouched images. Fake accounts may also have only one profile photo. You can use Google image search to check if the photo appears anywhere else on the internet.

Adopt a common sense approach. Many catfish will pretend they are professional models, in these cases, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Accounts with few followers/friends, or followers of just one age/gender.

Accounts with little activity or interactions on their profile. For example not tagged in photos, no interests or likes etc.

Remember consent is needed to share images of someone else. In the case of U-18's permission must be given by the parent. If you spot a fake account, report it to the service provider. Most social networks and apps allow you to report fake profiles. See below for details on how to report profiles on some of the more popular sites/networks.

Facebook - facebook.com/help/report-fake-account

YouTube - google.com/youtube/report

Instagram - help.instagram.com/report

Twitter - support.twitter.com/forms/impersonation

Protecting your Photos Online

One of the big concerns recently for Irish teens is privacy and the risk of their images being used to set up fake social media profiles. Social media is all about sharing pictures and teens love to share! However, some children may not be aware of how easily it can be to take photos from social media sites and profiles, including their own. Here's a few tips for protecting his/her privacy and images online.

Talk about privacy settings. Many children and young people may not be aware that some social networks are set to public by default. This means anything they share including photos can be seen by anyone.

It is easy to save images from social media. Depending on your privacy settings, some images can be downloaded directly from social networks by others. Alternatively, it is very easy to screenshot photos from sites like Instagram and Twitter.

If you are worried that an image might have be used by someone else, you can do an image search on Google. You can either type their name into Google image search or upload their image directly. Google will search for the same image online and any similar images. If you discover that someone is using your image or your child's image without consent, report it directly to the service provider and they should remove it.

Encourage inactive social media accounts are closed down. Social media and networks change quickly and teens are always eager to move on to the next big thing. However, they may forget about networks they were previously on and leave old profiles inactive. People who catfish often find images on inactive social media accounts.

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(Image via MTV) Catfish is a slang term used to describe someone who creates a false identity online. The term originated from a 2010 U.S documentary, titled Catfish. The film follows a young man who developed an online relationship with a woman, only to find out the person he thought he was communicating with was someone else.

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By Salihu Hussaini

In the world of social media, bogus social media accounts abound. Anyone can create or even buy a fake account and use it for a variety of reasons - to make themselves appear more popular than they are, to send spam, or for other more malicious reasons. There are also many grey areas in the social media world, which can cause business owners to be concerned.
The advantages of engaging through social media are well documented. Companies can enjoy a closer relationship with their customers and clients, as recently demonstrated by O2 which offered a great example of how a negative situation (a network outage) could be softened by effective social media management.

Social media sites also offer global reach, provide a platform to share content, and their reach and impact is easily measurable. Even better, all of this is free, as the infrastructure is managed by the social media network itself.
Businesses and brands everywhere are engaging with social media, but little is documented about the risk to brands of not knowing who they're engaging with. With so many fraudulent accounts, and no fundamental way of proving the identity of people online, what's to stop someone hitting the company hard in terms of reputation?
When people are anonymous, they can effectively say things with no repercussions.

Just look at the damages of online bullying and trolling. In the same way a company's name can be slandered, false and libelous allegations can be made with the sense of security that anonymity brings. People can wrongly think they're above the law, which is of course bad news for companies whose reputation is on the line.
The issue is particularly pertinent in light of Samsung's admission this week that it had been posting anonymous comments praising its own products and slamming rival HTC on Taiwanese gadget sites.

The electronics brand was rumbled when TaiwanSamsungLeaksrevealed that Samsung's marketing had paid students to post claims on forums, including "The HTC One X repeatedly crashes," "The Galaxy S3 benchmarks better than the HTC One X," and "The Galaxy Note is way better than the HTC Sensation XL."
These dangers tie into the greater issue of whether and to what extent the Internet should be anonymous. The implications of knowing who's who on the Internet go far wider than social media, and there has recently been talk about introducing regulation in online advertising.

This would mean that products that should only be available to those over age eighteen, such as alcohol, online gambling, or mature-rated games, could only be marketed at their target audience. But how could this be enforced without effective identity verification?
Without any form of regulation, it's not difficult for minors to be enticed by such unsuitable products, and not much harder to actually access and purchase them. To enable this proposed change, companies would need to be able to prove that the people they're marketing to online be of a suitable age.

Regulation and the idea of removing user anonymity bring about their own problems, too. There's the understandable fear of misuse or loss of user information; the fear of it being used for fraudulent purposes; and in countries where expressing certain political views has serious implications, the fear of being readily identifiable is justified.
Another problem to consider is the threat of identity theft. Having all your "real" details on your Facebook profile would make you an easy target.

Hussssini is a student of Mass Communication and wrote from Minna

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By Salihu Hussaini In the world of social media, bogus social media accounts abound. Anyone can create or even buy a fake account and use it for a variety of reasons - to make themselves appear more popular than they are, to send spam, or for other more malicious reasons.

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When receiving a friendship request on Facebook, from that relative who is a little unhappy or the colleague that is spying, we always think twice about it before clicking "accept". Social media are now an integral part of our lives, which can be both fulfilling and destructive. Perhaps it's better that the boss doesn't see the photographs of that party we were at before an important meeting. For many people, the solution is simple: using a fake identity profile.

New survey reports that in the United States more and more users, especially young people, choose to create a fake identity profile. The phenomenon is so widespread that it already has a name: Finstagram, which unites " Instagram " with "fake" or "false". In many cases, the fake identity profile is not the only account, but a private duplicate intended to be used only with a small circle of select friends.

Behind this choice lies the need to carve out a space that is free from inhibitions, a social sphere in which to publish more silly and spontaneous photographs than those shared on the account open to everyone. Instagram is the social favorite of young people, and in Italy the number of users continues to grow.

In our community, the majority of users are under 35, and it is clear that teenagers like Instagram much more than Facebook. But for the moment the idea of using it to share images with as many people as possible still prevails: after all, it was born for this. It cannot be excluded that our country suffers from a certain delay compared to the Anglo-Saxon world, also because the goliardic component is far from absent. On Instagram many prefer a playful and disengaged behavior under their fake identity profile, but to exchange images or messages which are more foolish or private, we mainly use messaging systems such as Whatsapp.

In Italy, the phenomenon of social anonymity is widespread mainly on Facebook. It is impossible to know how many of the 27 million users who are active monthly in our country (as of November 2015) have chosen to use a fake identity. What is clear is that none of them seems to care much about the official social network policy, which reads unequivocally: "Facebook is a community where people use their authentic identities".

"The subscribers must provide the name they use in real life so that everyone always knows with whom they are connecting," explains Laura Bononcini, Head of Policy at Facebook Italia. This helps safeguard the safety of our community by making people more responsible, and helping us remove accounts created for malicious purposes such as harassment, fraud or incitement to hatred. According to the regulations, updated in 2015, it is possible to register with a name other than that with which you are registered in the registry, provided that it is "with which you identify yourself most and that you use it in your daily life". For us - says Bononcini - it is very important that this identity policy works for everyone, and in particular for the discriminated communities ". One example is transsexual people, who can subscribe to Facebook with the name they like to hear, even if it does not correspond to what is on their identity card.

This story was originally published here.

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Fake Identity Problem On Social Media - Freedom Fakes

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When receiving a friendship request on Facebook, from that relative who is a little unhappy or the colleague that is spying, we always think twice about it before clicking "accept". Social media are now an integral part of our lives, ... Continued

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Learn how you can protect yourself against fake profiles. Driven by a market to buy 'likes', there is a growing industry where relatively small organisations dubbed 'click farms' can churn out thousands of fake profiles every week.

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The real Jessica Rychly is a Minnesota teenager with a broad smile and wavy hair. She likes reading and the rapper Post Malone. When she goes on Facebook or Twitter, she sometimes muses about being bored or trades jokes with friends. Occasionally, like many teenagers, she posts a duck-face selfie.

But on Twitter, there is a version of Jessica that none of her friends or family would recognize. While the two Jessicas share a name, photograph and whimsical bio - "I have issues" - the other Jessica promoted accounts hawking Canadian real estate investments, cryptocurrency and a radio station in Ghana. The fake Jessica followed or retweeted accounts using Arabic and Indonesian, languages the real Jessica does not speak. While she was a 17-year-old high school senior, her fake counterpart frequently promoted graphic pornography, retweeting accounts called Squirtamania and Porno Dan.

All these accounts belong to customers of an obscure American company named Devumi that has collected millions of dollars in a shadowy global marketplace for social media fraud. Devumi sells Twitter followers and retweets to celebrities, businesses and anyone who wants to appear more popular or exert influence online. Drawing on an estimated stock of at least 3.5 million automated accounts, each sold many times over, the company has provided customers with more than 200 million Twitter followers, a New York Times investigation found.

The accounts that most resemble real people, like Ms. Rychly, reveal a kind of large-scale social identity theft. At least 55,000 of the accounts use the names, profile pictures, hometowns and other personal details of real Twitter users, including minors, according to a Times data analysis.

"I don't want my picture connected to the account, nor my name," Ms. Rychly, now 19, said. "I can't believe that someone would even pay for it. It is just horrible."

These accounts are counterfeit coins in the booming economy of online influence, reaching into virtually any industry where a mass audience - or the illusion of it - can be monetized. Fake accounts, deployed by governments, criminals and entrepreneurs, now infest social media networks. By some calculations, as many as 48 million of Twitter's reported active users - nearly 15 percent - are automated accounts designed to simulate real people, though the company claims that number is far lower.

In November, Facebook disclosed to investors that it had at least twice as many fake users as it previously estimated, indicating that up to 60 million automated accounts may roam the world's largest social media platform. These fake accounts, known as bots, can help sway advertising audiences and reshape political debates. They can defraud businesses and ruin reputations. Yet their creation and sale fall into a legal gray zone.

"The continued viability of fraudulent accounts and interactions on social media platforms - and the professionalization of these fraudulent services - is an indication that there's still much work to do," said Senator Mark Warner, the Virginia Democrat and ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which has been investigating the spread of fake accounts on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms.

Despite rising criticism of social media companies and growing scrutiny by elected officials, the trade in fake followers has remained largely opaque. While Twitter and other platforms prohibit buying followers, Devumi and dozens of other sites openly sell them. And social media companies, whose market value is closely tied to the number of people using their services, make their own rules about detecting and eliminating fake accounts.

Devumi's founder, German Calas, denied that his company sold fake followers and said he knew nothing about social identities stolen from real users. "The allegations are false, and we do not have knowledge of any such activity," Mr. Calas said in an email exchange in November.

The Times reviewed business and court records showing that Devumi has more than 200,000 customers, including reality television stars, professional athletes, comedians, TED speakers, pastors and models. In most cases, the records show, they purchased their own followers. In others, their employees, agents, public relations companies, family members or friends did the buying. For just pennies each - sometimes even less - Devumi offers Twitter followers, views on YouTube, plays on SoundCloud, the music-hosting site, and endorsements on LinkedIn, the professional-networking site.

The actor John Leguizamo has Devumi followers. So do Michael Dell, the computer billionaire, and Ray Lewis, the football commentator and former Ravens linebacker. Kathy Ireland, the onetime swimsuit model who today presides over a half-billion-dollar licensing empire, has hundreds of thousands of fake Devumi followers, as does Akbar Gbajabiamila, the host of the show "American Ninja Warrior." Even a Twitter board member, Martha Lane Fox, has some.

At a time when Facebook, Twitter and Google are grappling with an epidemic of political manipulation and fake news, Devumi's fake followers also serve as phantom foot soldiers in political battles online. Devumi's customers include both avid supporters and fervent critics of President Trump, and both liberal cable pundits and a reporter at the alt-right bastion Breitbart. Randy Bryce, an ironworker seeking to unseat Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, purchased Devumi followers in 2015, when he was a blogger and labor activist. Louise Linton, the wife of the Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, bought followers when she was trying to gain traction as an actress.

Devumi's products serve politicians and governments overseas, too. An editor at China's state-run news agency, Xinhua, paid Devumi for hundreds of thousands of followers and retweets on Twitter, which the country's government has banned but sees as a forum for issuing propaganda abroad. An adviser to Ecuador's president, Lenín Moreno, bought tens of thousands of followers and retweets for Mr. Moreno's campaign accounts during last year's elections.

Kristin Binns, a Twitter spokeswoman, said the company did not typically suspend users suspected of buying bots, in part because it is difficult for the business to know who is responsible for any given purchase. Twitter would not say whether a sample of fake accounts provided by The Times - each based on a real user - violated the company's policies against impersonation.

"We continue to fight hard to tackle any malicious automation on our platform as well as false or spam accounts," Ms. Binns said.

Unlike some social media companies, Twitter does not require accounts to be associated with a real person. It also permits more automated access to its platform than other companies, making it easier to set up and control large numbers of accounts.

"Social media is a virtual world that is filled with half bots, half real people," said Rami Essaid, the founder of Distil Networks, a cybersecurity company that specializes in eradicating bot networks. "You can't take any tweet at face value. And not everything is what it seems."

Including, it turns out, Devumi itself.

Last year, three billion people logged on to social media networks like Facebook, WhatsApp and China's Sina Weibo. The world's collective yearning for connection has not only reshaped the Fortune 500 and upended the advertising industry but also created a new status marker: the number of people who follow, like or "friend" you. For some entertainers and entrepreneurs, this virtual status is a real-world currency. Follower counts on social networks help determine who will hire them, how much they are paid for bookings or endorsements, even how potential customers evaluate their businesses or products.

High follower counts are also critical for so-called influencers, a budding market of amateur tastemakers and YouTube stars where advertisers now lavish billions of dollars a year on sponsorship deals. The more people influencers reach, the more money they make. According to data collected by Captiv8, a company that connects influencers to brands, an influencer with 100,000 followers might earn an average of $2,000 for a promotional tweet, while an influencer with a million followers might earn $20,000.

Genuine fame often translates into genuine social media influence, as fans follow and like their favorite movie stars, celebrity chefs and models. But shortcuts are also available: On sites like Social Envy and DIYLikes.com, it takes little more than a credit-card number to buy a huge following on almost any social media platform. Most of these sites offer what they describe as "active" or "organic" followers, never quite stating whether real people are behind them. Once purchased, the followers can be a powerful tool.

"You see a higher follower count, or a higher retweet count, and you assume this person is important, or this tweet was well received," said Rand Fishkin, the founder of Moz, a company that makes search engine optimization software. "As a result, you might be more likely to amplify it, to share it or to follow that person."

Twitter and Facebook can be similarly influenced. "Social platforms are trying to recommend stuff - and they say, 'Is the stuff we are recommending popular?'" said Julian Tempelsman, the co-founder of Smyte, a security firm that helps companies combat online abuse, bots and fraud. "Follower counts are one of the factors social media platforms use."

Search on Google for how to buy more followers, and Devumi often turns up among the first results. Visitors are greeted by a polished website listing a Manhattan address, displaying testimonials from customers and a money-back guarantee. Best of all, Devumi claims, the company's products are blessed by the platform for which they are selling followers. "We only use promotion techniques that are Twitter approved so your account is never at risk of getting suspended or penalized," Devumi's website promises.

To better understand Devumi's business, we became a customer. In April, The Times set up a test account on Twitter and paid Devumi $225 for 25,000 followers, or about a penny each. As advertised, the first 10,000 or so looked like real people. They had pictures and full names, hometowns and often authentic-seeming biographies. One account looked like that of Ms. Rychly, the young Minnesota woman.

But on closer inspection, some of the details seemed off. The account names had extra letters or underscores, or easy-to-miss substitutions, like a lowercase "L" in place of an uppercase "I."

The next 15,000 followers from Devumi were more obviously suspect: no profile pictures, and jumbles of letters, numbers and word fragments instead of names.

In August, a Times reporter emailed Mr. Calas, asking if he would answer questions about Devumi. Mr. Calas did not respond. Twitter forbids selling or buying followers or retweets, and Devumi promises customers absolute discretion. "Your info is always kept confidential," the company's website reads. "Our followers look like any other followers and are always delivered naturally. The only way anyone will know is if you tell them."

But company records reviewed by The Times revealed much of what Devumi and its customers prefer to conceal.

Most of Devumi's best-known buyers are selling products, services or themselves on social media. In interviews, their explanations varied. They bought followers because they were curious about how it worked, or felt pressure to generate high follower counts for themselves or their customers. "Everyone does it," said the actress Deirdre Lovejoy, a Devumi customer.

While some said they believed Devumi was supplying real potential fans or customers, others acknowledged that they knew or suspected they were getting fake accounts. Several said they regretted their purchases.

"It's fraud," said James Cracknell, a British rower and Olympic gold medalist who bought 50,000 followers from Devumi. "People who judge by how many likes or how many followers, it's not a healthy thing."

Ms. Ireland has over a million followers on Twitter, which she often uses to promote companies with whom she has endorsement deals. The Wisconsin-based American Family Insurance, for example, said that the former model was one of its most influential Twitter "brand ambassadors," celebrities who are paid to help promote products.

But in January last year, Ms. Ireland had only about 160,000 followers. The next month, an employee at the branding agency she owns, Sterling/Winters, spent about $2,000 for 300,000 more followers, according to Devumi records. The employee later made more purchases, he acknowledged in an interview. Much of Ms. Ireland's Twitter following appears to consist of bots, a Times analysis found.

A spokeswoman said that the employee had acted without Ms. Ireland's authorization and had been suspended after The Times asked about the purchases. "I'm sure he thought he was fulfilling his duties, but it's not something he should have done," said the spokeswoman, Rona Menashe.

Similarly, Ms. Lane Fox, a British e-commerce pioneer, member of Parliament and Twitter board member, blamed a "rogue employee" for a series of follower purchases spanning more than a year. She declined to name the person.

Several Devumi customers or their representatives contacted by The Times declined to comment, among them Mr. Leguizamo, whose followers were bought by an associate. Many more did not respond to repeated efforts to contact them.

A few denied making Devumi purchases. They include Ashley Knight, Mr. Lewis's personal assistant, whose email address was listed on an order for 250,000 followers, and Eric Kaplan, a friend to Mr. Trump and motivational speaker whose personal email address was associated with eight orders. A Twitter account belonging to Paul Hollywood, the celebrity baker, was deleted after The Times emailed him with questions. Mr. Hollywood then sent a reply: "Account does not exist."

Over two years, the Democratic public relations consultant and CNN contributor Hilary Rosen bought more than a half-million fake followers from Devumi. Ms. Rosen previously spent more than a decade as head of the Recording Industry Association of America. In an interview, she described the purchases as "an experiment I did several years ago to see how it worked." She made more than a dozen purchases of followers from 2015 to 2017, according to company records.

Other buyers said they had faced pressure from employers to generate social media followers. Marcus Holmlund, a young freelance writer, was at first thrilled when Wilhelmina, the international modeling agency, hired him to manage its social media efforts. But when Wilhelmina's Twitter following didn't grow fast enough, Mr. Holmlund said, a supervisor told him to buy followers or find another job. In 2015, despite misgivings, he began making monthly Devumi purchases out of his own pocket.

"I felt stuck with the threat of being fired, or worse, never working in fashion again," said Mr. Holmlund, who left in late 2015. "Since then, I tell anyone and everyone who ever asks that it's a total scam - it won't boost their engagement." (A Wilhelmina spokeswoman declined to comment.)

Several Devumi customers acknowledged that they bought bots because their careers had come to depend, in part, on the appearance of social media influence. "No one will take you seriously if you don't have a noteworthy presence," said Jason Schenker, an economist who specializes in economic forecasting and has purchased at least 260,000 followers.

Not surprisingly, Devumi has sold millions of followers and retweets to entertainers on the lower and middle rungs of Hollywood, such as the actor Ryan Hurst, a star of the television series "Sons of Anarchy." In 2016 and 2017, he bought a total of 750,000 followers, about three-quarters of his current count. It cost less than $4,000, according to company records. Mr. Hurst did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Devumi also sells bots to reality television stars, who can parlay fame into endorsement and appearance fees. Sonja Morgan, a cast member on the Bravo show "The Real Housewives of New York City," uses her Devumi-boosted Twitter feed to promote her fashion line, a shopping app and a website that sells personalized "video shout-outs." One former "American Idol" contestant, Clay Aiken, even paid Devumi to spread a grievance: his customer service complaint against Volvo. Devumi bots retweeted his complaint 5,000 times.

Mr. Aiken and Ms. Morgan did not respond to requests for comment.

More than a hundred self-described influencers - whose market value is even more directly linked to their follower counts on social media - have purchased Twitter followers from Devumi. Justin Blau, a popular Las Vegas-based D.J. who performs as 3LAU, acquired 50,000 followers and thousands of retweets. In an email, Mr. Blau said a former member of his management team bought them without his approval.

At least five Devumi influencer customers are also contractors for HelloSociety, an influencer agency owned by The New York Times Company. (A Times spokeswoman said the company sought to verify that the audience of each contractor was legitimate and would not do business with anyone who violated that standard.) Lucas Peterson, a freelance journalist who writes a travel column for The Times, also bought followers from Devumi.

Influencers need not be well known to rake in endorsement money. According to a recent profile in the British tabloid The Sun, two young siblings, Arabella and Jaadin Daho, earn a combined $100,000 a year as influencers, working with brands such as Amazon, Disney, Louis Vuitton and Nintendo. Arabella, who is 14, tweets under the name Amazing Arabella.

But her Twitter account - and her brother's - are boosted by thousands of retweets purchased by their mother and manager, Shadia Daho, according to Devumi records. Ms. Daho did not respond to repeated attempts to reach her by email and through a public relations firm.

While Devumi sells millions of followers directly to celebrities and influencers, its customers also include marketing and public relations agencies, which buy followers for their own customers. Phil Pallen, a brand strategist based in Los Angeles, offers customers "growth & ad campaigns" on social media. At least a dozen times, company records show, Mr. Pallen has paid Devumi to deliver those results. Beginning in 2014, for example, he purchased tens of thousands of followers for Lori Greiner, the inventor and "Shark Tank" co-host.

Mr. Pallen at first denied buying those followers. After The Times contacted Ms. Greiner, Mr. Pallen said he had "experimented" with the company but "stopped using it long ago." A lawyer for Ms. Greiner said she had asked him to stop after learning of the first purchases.

Still, records show, Mr. Pallen bought Ms. Greiner more Devumi followers in 2016.

Marketing consultants sometimes buy followers for themselves, too, in effect purchasing the evidence of their supposed expertise. In 2015, Jeetendr Sehdev, a former adjunct professor at the University of Southern California who calls himself "the world's leading celebrity branding authority," began buying hundreds of thousands of fake followers from Devumi.

He did not respond to requests for comment. But in his recent best-selling book, "The Kim Kardashian Principle: Why Shameless Sells," he had a different explanation for his rising follower count. "My social media following exploded," Mr. Sehdev claimed, because he had discovered the true secret to celebrity influence: "Authenticity is the key."

Among the followers delivered to Mr. Sehdev was Ms. Rychly - or at least, a copy of her. The fake Rychly account, created in 2014, was included in the purchase orders of hundreds of Devumi customers. It was retweeted by Mr. Schenker, the economist, and Arabella Daho, the teenage influencer. Clive Standen, star of the show "Taken," ended up with Ms. Rychly's stolen social identity. So did the television baker Mr. Hollywood, the French entertainer DJ Snake and Ms. Ireland. (DJ Snake's followers were purchased by a former manager, and Mr. Standen did not respond to requests for comment.)

The fake Ms. Rychly also retweeted at least five accounts linked to a prolific American pornographer named Dan Leal, who is based in Hungary and tweets as @PornoDan. Mr. Leal, who has bought at least 150,000 followers from Devumi in recent years, is one of at least dozens of customers who work in the adult film industry or as escorts, according to a review of Devumi records.

In an email, Mr. Leal said that buying followers for his business generated more than enough new revenue to pay for the expense. He was not worried about being penalized by Twitter, Mr. Leal said. "Countless public figures, companies, music acts, etc. purchase followers," he wrote. "If Twitter was to purge everyone who did so there would be hardly any of them on it."

Devumi has sold at least tens of thousands of similar high-quality bots, a Times analysis found. In some cases, a single real Twitter user was transformed into hundreds of different bots, each a minute variation on the original.

These fake accounts borrowed social identities from Twitter users in every American state and dozens of countries, from adults and minors alike, from highly active users and those who hadn't logged in to their accounts for months or years.

Sam Dodd, a college student and aspiring filmmaker, set up his Twitter account as a high school sophomore in Maryland. Before he even graduated, his Twitter details were copied onto a bot account.

The fake account remained dormant until last year, when it suddenly began retweeting Devumi customers continuously. This summer, the fake Mr. Dodd promoted various pornographic accounts, including Mr. Leal's Immoral Productions, as well as a link to a gambling website.

"I don't know why they'd take my identity - I'm a 20-year-old college student," Mr. Dodd said. "I'm not well known." But even unknown, Mr. Dodd's social identity has value in the influence economy. At prices posted in December, Devumi was selling high-quality followers for under two cents each. Sold to about 2,000 customers - the rough number that many Devumi bot accounts follow - his social identity could bring Devumi around $30.

The stolen social identities of Twitter users like Mr. Dodd are critical to Devumi's brand. The high-quality bots are usually delivered to customers first, followed by millions of cheaper, low-quality bots, like sawdust mixed in with grated Parmesan.

Some of Devumi's high-quality bots, in effect, replace an idle Twitter account - belonging to someone who stopped using the service - with a fake one. Whitney Wolfe, an executive assistant who lives in Florida, opened a Twitter account in 2008, when she was a wedding planner. By the time she stopped using it regularly in 2014, a fake account copying her personal information had been created. In recent months, it has retweeted adult film actresses, several influencers and an escort turned memoirist.

"The content - pictures of women in thongs, pictures of women's chests - it's not anything I want to be represented with my faith, my name, where I live," said Ms. Wolfe, who is active in her local Southern Baptist congregation.

Other victims were still active on Twitter when Devumi-sold bots began impersonating them. Salle Ingle, a 40-year-old engineer who lives in Colorado, said she worried that a potential employer would come across the fake version of her while vetting her social media accounts.

"I've been applying for new jobs, and I'm really grateful that no one saw this account and thought it was me," Ms. Ingle said. Once contacted by The Times, Ms. Ingle reported the account to Twitter, which deactivated it.

After emailing Mr. Calas last year, a Times reporter visited Devumi's Manhattan address, listed on its website. The building has dozens of tenants, including a medical clinic and a labor union. But Devumi and its parent company, Bytion, do not appear to be among them. A spokesman for the building's owner said neither Devumi nor Bytion had ever rented space there.

Like the followers Devumi sold, the office was an illusion.

In real life, Devumi is based in a small office suite above a Mexican restaurant in West Palm Beach, Fla., overlooking an alley crowded with Dumpsters and parked cars. Mr. Calas lives a short commute away, in a penthouse apartment.

On his LinkedIn profile, Mr. Calas is described as a "serial entrepreneur," with a long record in the tech business and an advanced degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But Mr. Calas's persona, too, is a mixture of fact and fantasy.

Mr. Calas, who is 27, grew up in South Florida, where as a teenager he learned web design and built sites for local businesses, according to earlier versions of his personal web page available on the Internet Archive.

Eventually he taught himself techniques for search engine optimization - the art of pushing a web page higher in search results. While in high school, he began taking classes at Palm Beach State College, where he earned an associate degree in 2012, according to a school spokeswoman. Within a few years, Mr. Calas was claiming to have built dozens of online businesses serving 10 million customers, now under the Bytion umbrella.

"I started this company with a thousand dollars in the bank, without investors, and only the burning passion for success," Mr. Calas wrote last year on the job-listing site Glassdoor.

As Mr. Calas's ambitions grew, so did his embroidery. A copy of his résumé posted online in 2014 claimed that he earned a physics degree from Princeton University in 2000, when he would have been about 10 years old, and a Ph.D. in computer science from M.I.T. Representatives for both schools said they had no record of Mr. Calas's attending their institution. His current LinkedIn page says that he has a master's degree in "international business" from M.I.T., a degree it does not offer.

According to former employees interviewed by The Times, turnover was high at Devumi, and Mr. Calas kept his operation tightly compartmentalized. Employees sometimes had little idea what their colleagues were doing, even if they were working on the same project.

The ex-employees asked for anonymity for fear of lawsuits or because they were subject to nondisclosure agreements with Mr. Calas's companies. But their comments are echoed in reviews on Glassdoor, where some former employees said that Mr. Calas was uncommunicative and demanded that they install monitoring software on their personal devices.

Dozens of Devumi's customer service and order fulfillment personnel are based in the Philippines, according to company records. Employing overseas contractors may have helped Mr. Calas hold down costs. But it also appears to have left him vulnerable to a kind of social identity theft himself.

Last August, Mr. Calas sued Ronwaldo Boado, a Filipino contractor who previously worked for Devumi as an assistant customer support manager. After being fired for squabbling with other members of his team, Mr. Boado took control of a Devumi email account listing more than 170,000 customer orders, Mr. Calas alleged in court papers. Then Mr. Boado created a fake Devumi. (Some details of the lawsuit and of Devumi were previously reported by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.)

His copycat company used a similar name - DevumiBoost - and copied the design of Devumi's website, Mr. Calas alleged. The fake Devumi even listed the same phantom Manhattan address. Over a stretch of days last July, Mr. Boado, posing as a Devumi employee, emailed hundreds of Devumi customers to inform them that their orders needed to be reprocessed on DevumiBoost. Then he impersonated the customers, too, emailing Devumi under different aliases to ask that Devumi cancel the original orders. Mr. Boado, according to Mr. Calas, was trying to steal his customers. (Mr. Boado did not respond to emails seeking a response to Mr. Calas's claims.)

Mr. Calas's lawsuit also revealed something else: Devumi doesn't appear to make its own bots. Instead, the company buys them wholesale - from a thriving global market of fake social media accounts.

Scattered around the web is an array of obscure websites where anonymous bot makers around the world connect with retailers like Devumi. While individual customers can buy from some of these bare-boned sites - Peakerr, CheapPanel and YTbot, among others - they are less user-friendly. Some, for example, do not accept credit cards, only cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.

But each site sells followers, likes and shares in bulk, for a variety of social media platforms and in different languages. The accounts they sell may change hands repeatedly. The same account may even be available from more than one seller.

Devumi, according to one former employee, sourced bots from different bot makers depending on price, quality and reliability. On Peakerr, for example, 1,000 high-quality, English-language bots with photos costs a little more than a dollar. Devumi charges $17 for the same quantity.

The price difference has allowed Mr. Calas to build a small fortune, according to company records. In just a few years, Devumi sold about 200 million Twitter followers to at least 39,000 customers, accounting for a third of more than $6 million in sales during that period.

Last month, Mr. Calas asked for examples of bots The Times found that copied real users. After receiving the names of 10 accounts, Mr. Calas, who had agreed to an interview, asked for more time to analyze them. Then he stopped responding to emails.

Ms. Binns, the Twitter spokeswoman, said the company did not proactively review accounts to see if they were impersonating other users. Instead, the company's efforts are focused on identifying and suspending accounts that violate Twitter's spam policies. In December, for example, the company identified an average of 6.4 million suspicious accounts each week, she said.

All of the sample accounts provided by The Times violated Twitter's anti-spam policies and were shut down, Ms. Binns said. "We take the action of suspending an account from the platform very seriously," she said. "At the same time, we want to aggressively fight spam on the platform."

The company also suspended Devumi's account on Saturday after the Times article was published online.

Yet Twitter has not imposed seemingly simple safeguards that would help throttle bot manufacturers, such as requiring anyone signing up for a new account to pass an anti-spam test, as many commercial sites do. As a result, Twitter now hosts vast swaths of unused accounts, including what are probably dormant accounts controlled by bot makers.

Former employees said the company's security team for many years was more focused on abuse by real users, including racist and sexist content and orchestrated harassment campaigns. Only recently, they said, after revelations that Russia-aligned hackers had deployed networks of Twitter bots to spread divisive content and junk news, has Twitter turned more attention to weeding out fake accounts.

Leslie Miley, an engineer who worked on security and user safety at Twitter before leaving in late 2015, said, "Twitter as a social network was designed with almost no accountability."

Some critics believe Twitter has a business incentive against weeding out bots too aggressively. Over the past two years, the company has struggled to generate the user growth seen by rivals like Facebook and Snapchat. And outside researchers have disputed the company's estimates for how many of its active users are actually bots.

"We're working with completely unregulated, closed ecosystems that aren't reporting on these things. They have a perverse incentive to let it happen," said Mr. Essaid, the cybersecurity expert. "They want to police it to the extent it doesn't seem obvious, but they make money off it."

In January, after almost two years of promoting hundreds of Devumi customers, the fake Jessica Rychly account was finally flagged by Twitter's security algorithms. It was recently suspended.

But the real Ms. Rychly may soon leave Twitter for good.

"I am probably just going to delete my Twitter account," she said.

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The real Jessica Rychly is a Minnesota teenager with a broad smile and wavy hair. She likes reading and the rapper Post Malone. When she goes on Facebook or Twitter, she sometimes muses about being bored or trades jokes with friends. Occasionally, like many teenagers, she posts a duck-face selfie.

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fake identities can also be used to threaten people 

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fake identities can also be used to threaten people 

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The term "fake news" is heard everywhere now, from the President on down. But the fake news isn't just about politicians vs. the media-increasingly, it's being used by identity thieves to steal your personal data and money.

All those seemingly innocuous quizzes and polls, such as "Where is the first address you remember living?" or "Where did you and your spouse meet?" and even "What was your first pet and what was its name?" elicit the answers to the most common security questions used to verify your identity.

When you answer those quizzes and polls, "you may be inadvertently giving away the answers to 'secret questions' that can be used to unlock access to a host of your online identities and accounts," warns Krebs On Security.

Social Media Sharing and Identity Theft

All this trolling for your personal information isn't harmless. According to Javelin Strategy & Research, people who were active on social media had a 46% higher risk of having one of their bank or credit accounts taken over by scammers during 2016, a year when 15.4 million consumers were victimized at a total cost of $16 billion.

According to the Pew Research Center, two-thirds of tweets linked to popular sports, celebrities, news, and business sites are generated by Twitter bots, automated software of the same kind that's been used to generate deceptive and malicious information.

But no social media platform is immune. Instagram, Snapchat, and Pinterest have all been used by scammers to pull off frauds that can end up with you downloading spyware or handing over credit card numbers and other personal information. Because social media is all about sharing, the best way to protect yourself is to be careful about exactly what you share.

Even Google Maps has been exploited, with scammers creating fake pin locations and websites for phony hotels and attractions where consumers make a reservation, only to find their information has been stolen.

Even if a fake news site doesn't rip you off personally, the scammers behind it can be pulling in money by using phony stories to boost their traffic and search engine rankings, attracting unwitting advertisers.

How to Spot Fake News

Spotting fake news can sometimes be tricky. First, check around to see if this "miraculous" or "breathtaking" story is being reported elsewhere. When a video is involved, check to see if it's old footage that already was posted on Google, Youtube or Vimeo-and if the URL in the address bar goes to a legitimate website.

Be wary of clicking on ads or links that could grab your information or download malware or spyware to your computer. A "news report" of a "miracle cure" could well lead to a bogus product ad that just wants to snag your credit card information.

Sharing More Than Just News Stories

According to the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology (ICIT), fake news and videos tied to current events are just the latest ploys by ID thieves trying to grab personal information to steal your identity. Users of Facebook and other sharing sites are asked to share a fake post that can download or spread spyware that collects your online IDs, passwords, account numbers and other financial information.

In other scams, users are asked to fill out an online survey designed to snag sensitive information that to target you for phishing attacks or hack into your personal accounts.

"Victims interact with news lures for several reasons, which include a drive to be 'up-to-date' or current; a sense of urgency; socio-political polarization; curiosity; or fear," James Scott, a senior fellow at ICIT, writes in an analysis posted earlier this year on the institute's website. "The most effective lures either incorporate a real news article as an attachment, as a malicious link to a compromised site, or as a tantalizing banner bordering an article tailored to the potential victims."

The tactics go beyond posting ginned-up news accounts, Symantec warns, and includes impersonating friends, family members and victims of a tragedy, or selling souvenirs or commemorative items where the proceeds allegedly go to charity.

While fake news attacks are just the latest tactic ID thieves have cooked up, it isn't the only one. Social media sites are rife with opportunities for scammers to collect information that can be used to obtain access to your bank, credit-card and other accounts. That can include your full name, email address, location and names of family members, pets, birthdays, anniversary dates and other clues that can be used to crack passwords or bypass security questions.

Other Social Media Scams

The non-profit Identity Theft Resource Center described one recent con job involving Facebook and a fake holiday: "Cousins Day." Scammers sent emails claiming that the recipients had received a Facebook message from one or more cousins, and directed the readers to click a link to read the messages. Instead, the link took them to a site that would download malicious software to their computers.

Another scam that popped up in July used hacked Facebook accounts to impersonate friends or family members who claimed to have found government grants of $50,000 or $100,000. To get the money, victims were asked to send personal information and to send as much as $1,500 to cover fees for the program. In other attempts, bogus Facebook messages are used to lure friends or family members into sending money to help out someone with medical bills or an emergency.

The same ploys show up on Twitter, such as a link to help find out who's been reading your Twitter profile that also installed malware, and phony accounts of friends and family members pleading for help-in the form of money-or offering a link to a photo of you that goes to another malware site. Scambusters.org -a newsletter that tracks online fraud-found another Twitter con offered users a free cell phone if they transferred their current phone number. Instead, the victims were signed up to subscribe to a monthly astrology service.

No social media platform is immune. Instagram, Snapchat, and Pinterest have all been used by scammers to pull of frauds that can end up with you downloading spyware or handing over credit card numbers and other personal information. Because social media is all about sharing, the best way to protect yourself is to be careful about exactly what you share.

Social Media Scams Impact All Ages

And while, at first glance, it might seem that this would a problem mostly for Millennials who've grown up with social technology, even the AARP-whose members all are older than 50-sees an increasing threat to social media identity theft, and has launched its own educational program alerting its members to the threat.

Preventing Identity Theft on Social Media

The best way to prevent your information from falling into the wrong hands on social media involves the same basic steps as any other method of keeping your data safe. Don't share with strangers, know who you're communicating with and verify their identities, be aware that scams exist and remember that if something sounds too good to be true, it is.

In addition, you should take some time to understand just how the social media sites and apps you use actually function and how what you put online is shared.

Some additional resources on protecting yourself on social media:
Editorial Disclaimer: Opinions expressed here are author's alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, or other company, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of these entities. All information, including rates and fees, are accurate as of the date of publication.

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Here's Why Fake News Is a Threat to Your Identity | Experian

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Fake news is all over these days, but now it's not limited to politics-it's being used by ID thieves to steal your personal data over social media. Find out more about how fake news can be a threat to your identity.

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Scammers create a new form of theft: 'Synthetic-identity fraud'

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Scammers create a new form of theft: 'Synthetic-identity fraud'

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Duckycards | Getty Images

Many people dutifully check their credit report for suspicious or unfamiliar activity. When there's no red flags, they sigh in relief.

They shouldn't.

Today such measures can be no better than knocking on wood, thanks to a complex crime known as synthetic-identity fraud.

That's when criminals use a concoction of disparate data - including Social Security numbers, names and addresses - to create a fake identity with "his" or "her" own credit file. With this fictitious person, wrongdoers can take out 10 credit cards or a loan on a brand-new Ferrari.

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It's the fastest-growing and hardest-to-detect form of identity theft, according to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

Credit reporting agency Equifax said the crime has "become the predominant tactic for fraudsters."

Synthetic fraud balances rose 68 percent between 2015 and 2016, according to TransUnion, another credit reporting agency (though the agency found the growth in the following year slowed.)

"High-tech fraudsters armed with real personal information on good consumers apply with multiple identities for multiple products with multiple lenders within hours or days," said Geoff Miller, head of global fraud and identity solutions for TransUnion, in a statement.

When criminals use a blend of different people's data, as well as some entirely made up information, it becomes harder for law-enforcement officials to both realize the crime and then locate the culprit, said R. Sean McCleskey, a retired United States Secret Service agent who supervised an identity-theft task force for more than a decade.

"If you're using an address you control, the person whose Social Security number you're using may never be getting the account statements," he said.

Once these criminals have successfully opened a new credit file, they often practice good personal finance, diligently building the fake consumers' credit scores.

A higher rating, of course, allows for greater damage down the road.

"These are organized crime rings that are behind this," said director of research Julie Conroy at research firm Aite, adding that she's heard of fraudsters "nurturing" a credit file for five years before taking off on their lending spree.

What's behind the rise?

Synthetic-identity fraud resulted in $800 million in credit card losses in 2017, up from $580 million in 2015 - and that amount is expected to grow in the years ahead, according to a recent investigation by Aite.

Conroy said many factors have led to the proliferation of phony credit files.

As the economy improves, she said, "credit grantors have loosened their standards."

In addition, she said the Social Security Administration's decision to randomize people's numbers in 2011 has made it harder for credit companies to confirm that the nine-digit number a person provides them with matches their identity.

"These are organized crime rings that are behind this. " -Julie Conroy, director of research at Aite

"That logic check went out the window," Conroy said. (Previously, people's numbers were correlated with their geography.)

Children are particularly vulnerable to this variety of crime. Since kids will not apply for credit until they're at least 18, criminals can utilize their Social Security number for years without raising alarm. But instead of saying the person is, say, 7, they'll say the person is 34.

Only once the individial goes to apply for his or her first credit card will they realize what's happened to them.

The elderly, who might not use their credit often, and the homeless, are also at an additional risk, according to the Government Accountability Office.

"We have to start being proactive on fraud instead of reactive," said former agent McCleskey. " Looking at what ways criminals are able to utilize gaps in otherwise legitimate methods to commit fraud."

What you can do

* Give out your Social Security number as seldom as possible, Aite's Conroy said.

* If a doctor's form asks for it, she said, "Don't fill it out - they don't need it."

* Look into possibly freezing your child's credit, McCleskey said (if your state allows you to do so).

* Experian offers a way for consumers to surveil the dark web - where much of the information that goes into synthetic-identity fraud is collected, to find out if your data is on the market (though you have to pay for it).

* Conduct regular checks on your credit. "Look for unrecognizable aliases on the report," McCleskey said.

* If you receive any warning signs, such as collectors calling you for a debt that is not yours, immediately contact your bank and the authorities.

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The latest twist on a growing problem is 'synthetic-identity fraud'

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Duckycards | Getty Images Many people dutifully check their credit report for suspicious or unfamiliar activity. When there's no red flags, they sigh in relief. They shouldn't. Today such measures can be no better than knocking on wood, thanks to a complex crime known as synthetic-identity fraud.

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Fake identities in social media: A case study on the sustainability of the Facebook business model

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Fake identities in social media: A case study on the sustainability of the Facebook business model

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Fake identities in social media: A case study on the sustainability of the Facebook business model - Semantic Scholar

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Social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+ have attracted millions of users in the last years. One of the most widely used social networks, Facebook, recently had an initial public offering (IPO) in May 2012, which was among the biggest in Internet technology.