Likepack
Regular Member
- Dec 4, 2015
- 207
- 37
Hey all! Being full aware of potential tensiousness to ‘newbie's coming up with more than 2 words at once I'll still try to post smth on IG botting once again - from another angle. It is a newbie-to-newbie approach I was desperatew for when I strated to investigate the case myself. I will update the post latter if it takes your fancy.
Local authorities: Give me a chance will you? I am putting out my thoughts on the matter and welcome questions and your ideas. So.
I'm sure most of you have been bugged at least once or twice by messages like "Awesome_username" or "There's a great profile you may wanna follow - _username". I'm talking about Instagram, because IG is pretty much the sweetest spot for botting and I've therefore been hard on it for some time. So, you may wanna ask - is there a way I can keep bots out of my precious personal online space? My answer would be - sorry, no. You cant.
Have you ever used hashtags, even once? This basic thing imminently puts you on spam lists. The easiest way ‘marketers' target their audience is by relevant hashtags. If you add a ‘cabernet' hashtag to you post - most likely you drink wine and will be interested in that local shop's offer they're promoting (in spammer's logic). Speaking of local shops - geotagging is not just a thing you use to keep your iPhone gallery organized, it's also a spammers' tool. It doesn't necessarily have to be a local venue that targets your account with spam just because you posted from a certain area - the spammer can actually be a thousand of miles away. But if they defined your town as they target area - you will be spammed.
Even such an innocent thing as putting your name into your IG account will play against you. Do you have more than 10 pictures in your gallery? You're on. There are tools that allow spammers to filter out other bots by criteria like the number of uploaded pictures or user activity. This way they make sure bots are targeting real people. Another thing that puts you in spammers' crosshairs is people and accounts you follow on IG. If you're subscribed to TechCrunch official page you must be interested in high-tech and computers. So don't be surprised if (rather when) yet another hardware or IT startup targets you with their latest ‘amazing' offer.
More to follow (hopefully).. Here goes:
So it is up to Instagram to look out for its users and they're doing all they can to stop spammers, right? Yes and no.
It's really a game of cat and mouse. All Instagram can do is constantly change it's API to make life harder for bot operators. But this imminently affects honest API users - which is any app that features IG integration. So Instagram has a system of red flags that allows it to detect suspicious activity and ban face accounts. The problem is - these red flags aren't really a secret - which allows spammers bypass them.
Spammers avoid using wi-fi connection to create and manage bots. If a new account logs in via wi-fi, IG remembers it and it will be very suspicious if the account logs in using a different IP. So suspicious that it would most likely reset the password - and the spammer will have to re-activate the account via email. If such activity repeats regularly IG bans the de-activates the account.
To avoid the ban spammers keep the bot account low for a while - managing it via 3G or LTE, adding as much information as possible and making at least 5 posts under this account to make IG think that this is a real person. In a while (a few weeks to a month) IG lowers its guard and that's when spammers begin their dirty work, most of which is done automatically.
Local authorities: Give me a chance will you? I am putting out my thoughts on the matter and welcome questions and your ideas. So.
I'm sure most of you have been bugged at least once or twice by messages like "Awesome_username" or "There's a great profile you may wanna follow - _username". I'm talking about Instagram, because IG is pretty much the sweetest spot for botting and I've therefore been hard on it for some time. So, you may wanna ask - is there a way I can keep bots out of my precious personal online space? My answer would be - sorry, no. You cant.
Have you ever used hashtags, even once? This basic thing imminently puts you on spam lists. The easiest way ‘marketers' target their audience is by relevant hashtags. If you add a ‘cabernet' hashtag to you post - most likely you drink wine and will be interested in that local shop's offer they're promoting (in spammer's logic). Speaking of local shops - geotagging is not just a thing you use to keep your iPhone gallery organized, it's also a spammers' tool. It doesn't necessarily have to be a local venue that targets your account with spam just because you posted from a certain area - the spammer can actually be a thousand of miles away. But if they defined your town as they target area - you will be spammed.
Even such an innocent thing as putting your name into your IG account will play against you. Do you have more than 10 pictures in your gallery? You're on. There are tools that allow spammers to filter out other bots by criteria like the number of uploaded pictures or user activity. This way they make sure bots are targeting real people. Another thing that puts you in spammers' crosshairs is people and accounts you follow on IG. If you're subscribed to TechCrunch official page you must be interested in high-tech and computers. So don't be surprised if (rather when) yet another hardware or IT startup targets you with their latest ‘amazing' offer.
More to follow (hopefully).. Here goes:
So it is up to Instagram to look out for its users and they're doing all they can to stop spammers, right? Yes and no.
It's really a game of cat and mouse. All Instagram can do is constantly change it's API to make life harder for bot operators. But this imminently affects honest API users - which is any app that features IG integration. So Instagram has a system of red flags that allows it to detect suspicious activity and ban face accounts. The problem is - these red flags aren't really a secret - which allows spammers bypass them.
Spammers avoid using wi-fi connection to create and manage bots. If a new account logs in via wi-fi, IG remembers it and it will be very suspicious if the account logs in using a different IP. So suspicious that it would most likely reset the password - and the spammer will have to re-activate the account via email. If such activity repeats regularly IG bans the de-activates the account.
To avoid the ban spammers keep the bot account low for a while - managing it via 3G or LTE, adding as much information as possible and making at least 5 posts under this account to make IG think that this is a real person. In a while (a few weeks to a month) IG lowers its guard and that's when spammers begin their dirty work, most of which is done automatically.
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I'm new here.. Thanks)