Dodgy Profiles Recognised

Does your social profile end in eight numbers, like it’s been generated by a machine, not a human? Guess what, I see you for your fakeness!

Spammer and ‘bot profiles appear everywhere. For every two real human profiles, there is another that isn’t. A third of the Internet is fake. As quickly as fake profiles are removed from social media, another takes its place.

In recent times, one easy way to immediately identify a faker is the number generated after the name. It’s too long to be a real human.

Think about it.

Janet Thompson89704765 starts out with a plausible, harmless-sounding female name, but no human sticks that many numbers to it. Even if it was a commonly used name that many other Janet Thompsons had already registered, it’s not like a human to use long numbers to identify them from another of the same name. It’s more likely they’d use a nickname or the year of their birth.

❌No Direct DMs❌

To slow the flow of spam and other time wasters, we stick up a message. No Direct DMs translates to: “Stop that,” “Go away,” or “Piss off!” as the never-ending junk torrent flows.

To be honest, I’ve always wondered how effective doing that is. Demanding a certain group of people to keep away sounds brilliant, but does it actually work? Do spammers actually take notice? They send out millions of messages a day, hoping the gullible cohort will follow the links and call them. Why would they stop and read a message? They have nothing to lose and everything to gain by moving forward and working on the 1% coming into their lair.

Social media is free. You use it. I use it. Spammers use it, too. In a way, much of OUR stuff could be considered to be spam. No one asks for it to be sent, yet there it is, demanding to be read, with links leading to paid products/services. Spam uses similar principles, doesn’t it?

There is one difference.

The ‘bots that generate fake profiles are not human. SPAMMERS who force their way into other people’s accounts are sub-human. WE are loved. THEY have profiles loaded with strings of numbers and are hated!

That’s the order that makes a difference.

Let @Kassy45675538 keep her spammy name so I can see her for what she is and stop her in her tracks with a block. She’s happy to send me junk. I’m delirious about blocking her. It’s a sound system for both of us.

Now, if @Kassy45675538 suddenly turned into @GeorgeTaylor, I wouldn’t know what to do next. Fortunately, most people who know me (or want to get to know me) include other details in their messages. They aren’t ambiguous like spammers and ‘bots. They speak my language. They write like natural speakers of my language.

My profile doesn’t demand anything from anyone. I use my social media space for soft sales and more relevant things, like little bits of information (and silliness) like this along the way.

-Michael63548671 (LOL)

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