Recent increase in verified TikTok fraudulent accounts, causation?

Over the last few months I've seen a huge increase in people with these TikTok accounts with the verification checkmark. There were a few of them a year or two ago, but now there's a larger amount, especially in comment sections. Usually it's the same 5-10 people in comment sections, and they always have some relation to crypto, malware, scamming, shady stuff... I dislike these types of people but it's become very common recently so I wanted to ask, does anyone know how these accounts are produced? From my knowledge, the verification mark goes away if you change the username (not display handle), and I've even seen fake Drake and Kanye accounts. Very weird activity but I thought TikTok had better ways of preventing or reporting this stuff

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yeah, a lot of these are probably compromised or bought verified accounts, not fresh accounts getting approved normally. tiktok seems slow at catching the display-name impersonation stuff unless enough people report the same account.

I've come across many similar accounts. They aren't run by the actual person, yet they're still verified. I think that's likely because they have a large enough following and enough views to qualify for verification.

I've seen many similar accounts that aren't managed by the actual person but are still verified. I believe this is because they've built a large following and consistently receive enough views to meet the platform's verification criteria.

419nigerian said:

Over the last few months I've seen a huge increase in people with these TikTok accounts with the verification checkmark. There were a few of them a year or two ago, but now there's a larger amount, especially in comment sections. Usually it's the same 5-10 people in comment sections, and they always have some relation to crypto, malware, scamming, shady stuff... I dislike these types of people but it's become very common recently so I wanted to ask, does anyone know how these accounts are produced? From my knowledge, the verification mark goes away if you change the username (not display handle), and I've even seen fake Drake and Kanye accounts. Very weird activity but I thought TikTok had better ways of preventing or reporting this stuff

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i believe the weird thing is the quick adaptation that these accounts have in order to explloit the trust indicators offered by a platform. the presence of a verification button or the use of familiar names is enough for users to get more relaxed nd this is precisely what maliicious actors want to take advantage of. It is not only about cleaning up the fake accounts but about identifying patterns of susspicious activity on the platform.

Update for anyone viewing this page:
These accounts are just obtained through a corrupt TikTok employee, nothing super interesting