Fake Twitter industry generating millions for abusers, Barracuda finds
The underground economy that sells fake Twitter and other social media accounts is now so large that is it easily making millions of dollars for the leading abusers, an updated study by Barracuda Networks has found.
The firm has made a speciality of researching the burgeoning economy that now creates and markets a number of different fake social media accounts, including Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube and even the much-ignored Google+, but it is Twitter that is now the core of this industry.
As with the established click-fraud scams, the con is made interesting by the huge currency the Internet places on followers, fans, connections, and views, all of which now have a price attached to them. For its latest Twitter study, the firm's methodology was simple; spend $100 buying fake accounts from a number of sources before analysing who was selling (the dealers) and buying (the abusers), and the special fake accounts through which the market sells its wares.
