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How to Spot a Fake Instagram DM & Comments [5 Red Flags]

With the rise of automated accounts and businesses that encourage you to buy fake followers, today we’re facing a lot of fake Instagram influencers out there. It’s not surprising though since being an influencer means making a lot of money these days. 

It seems like everyone wants to enjoy the benefits and some do not even intend to put any effort into building an organic following. 

 Have you ever thought about how many fake accounts are out there? Or what if you end up working with an influencer who has tons of fake followers? Is there any way to identify fake DMs and comments? 

In this post, we will be discussing fake Instagram DMs and comments and how harmful they can be for brands. Most importantly, we will teach you how to identify them and introduce you to one of the best DM apps on the market for sending authentic DMs to your target audience.

Pro tip: If you are searching for a DM app that can help you promote your business without sending fake and unreliable messages to users, skip this article and sign up for free on DMpro.

How to Identify Fake Instagram Comments & DMs

Let’s get started with the most important part which is “How to identify fake Instagram DMs and comments?” Take a look at the following tips in order to find out:

#1: Look for Unusually Low Engagement Rates

One of the easiest ways to detect fake Instagram commenters and DM senders is by checking their engagementtofollower ratio. 

 Most fake commenters will have thousands of followers but barely any likes. You should avoid commenters whose engagement rates are lower than 1% because there’s a high chance that they are fake.

#2: Analyze the Quality of Interactions

In addition to buying followers, some fake commenters and spammers also buy likes on their posts. In some cases, the bot followers they bought may be smarter than you expect. How? They will generate comments to appear more authentic. This means that their account will have a decent engagement rate. So, there’s still a chance that fake Instagram commenters could pass the first test.

So, what’s the solution? Manually going through their post interactions is a great way to double-check their authenticity. The quality of those interactions will help you understand the quality of their followers. A lot of spammy and irrelevant messages and comments would be a dead giveaway.

These bot comments tend to be generic, which means they can easily fit every kind of post. They could say stuff like “awesome,” “great shot,” “lovely pic,” etc. Or they could simply leave emoji comments that would apply to most pictures.

In the following screenshot, you can see that the comments are pretty generic. These comments would be suitable for any post, which means there’s a chance they’re coming from comment bots.

Fake generic comments under the posts

You may also come across posts with completely irrelevant spam comments.

But don’t forget that every public Instagram account is susceptible to receiving such comments. So unless there’s an unusually high number of these spam comments, don’t be too alarmed. Your main concern should be an excessive amount of super generic comments that seem relevant enough but could still work on other posts too.

The same procedure can be applied to DMs as well. Fake bots may send you irrelevant DMs with different content. Remember that Instagram will ban bot accounts that exceed the DM limit for sending DMs.

There are some options on the market like DMpro which let you send DMs to new users or existing followers and choose which niche to target in your DMs.

#3: Examine Their Follower Profiles

In most cases, you can easily filter out fake Instagram commenters and DM senders by the time you complete the second test. But if you’re still having a hard time figuring out whether those comments and messages are coming from bot accounts, the next step you can take is to examine some of the profiles. This is a perfectly reasonable dilemma because you may not want to immediately discredit some accounts just for leaving emojis and generic comments. Some real accounts do leave a lot of emoji comments, but they will typically be relevant to the image or caption. However, it’s hard to tell the difference every time. For example, in the following post, there are a lot of emoji comments.

 

 

Related comments under the posts

But if you look closer, most of the emojis are laughter emojis. This is because the post is about something funny. So these comments are not coming from bot accounts. To confirm the authenticity of the followers, you can go to the profiles of some of their followers. This may be a lengthy process, but you can simplify it by choosing to analyze the profiles of people who leave generic comments.

I’ve noticed that people don’t put in too much effort when they create fake accounts. They typically leave the bio blank or include only a few details. They will usually not have many posts, and sometimes they will have no posts at all. Some fake accounts may not even have a profile picture. And in most cases, they won’t have a lot of followers. So take note of all these factors and determine if a large portion of the comments are coming from accounts that fit any of these descriptions.

In this case, it’s highly likely that you’re dealing with fake Instagram influencers. Here’s a good example of an Instagram account that looks fake.

Fake account with no followers and posts

#4: Analyze Their Follower Growth Rate

Another easy way is by analyzing their follower growth rate. Fake commenters will usually have a sudden spike in followers at some point in time. The growth rate will then remain stagnant afterward since they’re not gaining any new followers organically

Take a look at the following growth chart of an account that likely bought some followers.

Instagram stats

There seems to be a sudden and drastic spike in followers within two days. But then the growth slightly drops soon after and then remains stagnant. The follower growth rate of this account looks highly unusual and suspicious.

There’s a high chance they bought followers because there’s no other logical explanation for that spike. Plus, there’s also this fact that the account gained a lot of followers on some days and lost tons of them on other days.

On the other hand, a real account will have a steady follower growth rate without any major spikes or drops in follower count. And if you look at the daily follower growth rate, you can see that the account is gradually gaining a handful of new followers every day.

#5: Analyze Their Audience Quality

You will need to use a tool to run an audience quality check for potential fake commenters. 

Instead, you can try the free IG Audit tool that’s built specifically to analyze the percentage of real followers on Instagram accounts.

All you need is to enter the username of the account you want to analyze. It’s important to note that this tool will only work for public Instagram accounts.

If I run an analysis of the suspicious account I previously analyzed using InfluencerDB, it gives me the following results. As you can see, the tool has estimated that only 12.4% of the account’s followers are real.

This will give you insights into how much real impact your brand is making on Instagram and how you measure up against your competition.

Keep in mind that most Instagram accounts will have bot followers because of the prevalence of such accounts. Most people may be unaware of this because these accounts don’t make up a large portion of their following. So remember you might not have 100% real followers.

It’s when the number of real followers is suspiciously low that you should be wary. In this case, the tool will highlight the number in red as shown in the previous screenshot. This means that the account is fake.

When a good portion is real, the tool will display the number in black as shown below.

fake Instagram influencers

Use DMpro and Avoid Fake Followers & Accounts

The best way to avoid fake followers and reach a high engagement rate is to use a good DM app in order to send DMs to your target audience and introduce your niche. 

DMpro, as the safest DM app on the market, helps you send mass automated DMs to as many users as you wish all at the same time (Of course, it’s also so cautious not to exceed the daily Instagram limit for sending DMs). Here are some other features of DMpro:

  • DMpro does hashtag research and chooses the best matches for your account to target.
  • Using DMpro, one can provide and send auto-responses for users’ frequently asked questions.
  • DMpro provides multiple alternatives for the words of the same message so that Instagram doesn’t ban your Instagram account or doesn’t recognize you as a bot.
  • You can receive DMs in your email. All you need to do is to connect your email to your account on DMpro. This way, you can also read messages without the ‘Seen’ receipt.
  • Desktop inbox is another option on DMpro which gives you this chance to organize your DMs all in one place.
  • You can use DMpro for more than one account and manage them all simultaneously.
  • DMpro also provides a link-in- bio option for the users who own a website or want to direct their audience to their other social media accounts.

So, why are waiting? Start your free trial right now by signing up on DMpro.

FAQs on Fake Instagram Accounts

Now it’s time to take a look at the most frequently asked questions around our topic, fake Instagram DM. Let’s go.

#1 What Is a Fake Instagram DM Maker Online?

It might have happened that you suddenly feel like playing a trick on someone, right?  If yes, you are in the righ place and that’s what a fake Instagram DM generator is good for. 

You can create fake Instagram messages, chats, and notifications using DM generators. These kinds of tools are designed for a fun purpose. They give you the opportunity to play pranks on friends. 

For instance, instead of getting a famous person to notice you on IG for real, you can create a FAKE chat with that celebrity on the app, which resembles Instagram direct messages and show it to your friends. Therefore, you are even able to make a fake Instagram DM with someone having a verified symbol on their profile.

#2 What Can I Do With Fake Instagram Accounts and Bots Messaging Me?

You can easily report or block accounts that send you random DMs on Instagram (or do both). Reporting these accounts is a good decision since Instagram takes care of your issues and might ban them completely after a while.

Besides, Instagram scams mostly take place in DMs. So, you should be careful not to reveal any of your personal data to fraudsters as well.

#3 What Is a Fake Instagram Account Checker?

The number of fake followers had better be checked on your Instagram. Why? Because they are a negative point for your account, especially if you want to do business on IG. There are apps that help you check whether an account has organic growth or the followers are just fake. This tool is useful in two cases:

  • When you want to request an influencer to advertise for your company or your line of business, you need to know how many of their followers are real.
  • Provided that you want to grow in your profession and you already have a considerable number of followers, before doing anything, you must know to what extent your followers can be beneficial to your progress. Real followers can determine your success.

In order to establish your online career, you should also measure your engagement rate. So, remember that the number of followers doesn’t matter per se; what matters is how much your followers interact with you, like your content, or write comments under your posts. 

Here is where these fake Instagram account checkers can come to your help and inform you about the engagement rate of a specific Instagram account. 

Final Thoughts

Now, are you clear on how to spot a fake Instagram DM or comment? Take a look at all the above tips in previous sections. To avoid fake followers and have an organic growth of followers, start using the DMpro.