Someone else may be using your profile picture.
The network is a great tool and also a kind of dangerous neighborhood, you can gain fame and lose everything.
First lesson, nothing is free and nothing is too easy.
Since a couple of years ago profile theft and impersonation have become uncontrollable, and no, you don’t need to be a very important person or a millionaire to be a victim, many users believe that because they have few followers they are immune to threats, but the reality is completely different.
I can not give you an exact profile of a possible victim, because the attacks are performed randomly.
It is easier to identify the cloned profile of a celebrity than that of a family member, they can steal your Meta account with something similar to this.
In this case it is necessary that you open that link, advice, do not open strange links, well, but how to know that a link can be malicious?
-Observe its structure
-Pay attention to each word (facebook.com is not the same as fazebook.com).
-Use tools like metadefender.
Well, that’s the “obvious” way, but the most used is when the victim has no idea what is happening, your profile picture and name, are public, an attacker will take these resources will block you and start adding your contacts, now comes the scary part, your picture can have 7 names and nationalities, and your name can be related to 10 different photos, and someone will use that data to scam others, at this moment maybe you say “my Ig account is private, they can’t steal my photos”, bad news, yes they can, and they don’t need all your photos, just the profile one, and it’s as easy as going to google and typing “download profile photo”.
On the web you can find thousands of articles that tell you how to identify a fake profile, I’ll be honest, they don’t help much, we can define 3 types of users:
-Active, they post every step they take.
-Passive, they share only relevant events.
-Discreet, they don’t share anything related to their private life, they limit themselves to give their opinion and share some multimedia.
-Fake, they share many links.
A fake profile is usually automated, some have chat-bots, if you doubt one first answer yourself, why the hell did I add this user, and second, put it to the test, ask something complex, fake profiles do not answer comments, difficult questions, do not issue criteria, do not answer calls and if they have a photo, second tip, look for the photo on the web, any engine will do:
·Google
·Bing
·TinEye
·Saucenao
·Pimeyes
·IQDB
It is also useful for you to look for yourself.
If you suspect it’s a trick photo,I recommend:
·Forensically
·FotoForensics
Both have a clear and concise tutorial that will guide you to use the tool.
Cloned profiles are not only used to scam third parties, they are widely used to generate follower farms, surely you have seen an ad that promises you 10k followers in a week, those are not followers, they are bots or filler accounts, with artificially generated profile pictures or photos stolen from other people.
Unfortunately the authorities still can not do much in cases of identity theft, so it is best to expose yourself less, photos are great and that’s why I suggest you avoid showing sensitive information, and most importantly do not add someone you do not know, and if you are going to do it, follow the steps I have given you, if you check that it is real, then identify why you want to add that user, people are known by interacting.
