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How to Find and Remove FakeFollowers from Twitter andInstagramBy Lisa Karl

Published February 24, 2015

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TweetAre fake followers clogging your social mediaaccounts?

Would you like to get rid of them?

Chances are you have some fake followers onInstagram and Twitter. You might even be followingsome fake accounts, yourself.

In this article you’ll discover four tools to help you find and remove fakefollowers from Twitter and Instagram.

Concerned About Fake Followers?Fake followers on social media accounts clutter your stream, reduce yourengagement, expose you (and your legitimate followers) to phishing or spam and putyou at risk for having your account deleted. And fake followers can’t buy your productor service!

Discover how to f ind and remove fake follow ers on Instagram and Tw itter.

The only purpose for fake accounts is spamming or, in the case of fake accounts thatwere bought, pumping up someone’s reputation.

Does someone you follow seem to have a suspiciously high number of followers? You

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can use these tools to check their accounts, too.

#1: Fakers AppThe folks at Status People developed the Fakers app to check fake and emptyTwitter accounts. This tool allows you to easily see how many fake or emptyaccounts follow you, as well as check on the competition.

On the Status People website, click Connect to Twitter to begin. You’ll need toauthorize the app to access your Twitter account. In less than a minute (for smalleraccounts) or up to a few minutes (for larger accounts), you’ll be able to see your ownfollower report.

My Fakers app report on January 29, 2015.

According to the Fakers app, 6% of my followers are fake, and 30% are inactive.Status People’s definition of a spam account is one that has few or no followers, haslittle activity and yet follows a massive number of accounts.

The report also lets you view a few details about your followers.

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Status People offers some details about your follow ers.

For example, nearly all of my followers speak English, a quarter of them haven’ttweeted in a while and a quarter of them follow fewer than 250 people. The reporteven shows the Twitter handles of some of my fake followers.

Status People offers three levels of service:

The free account allows for unlimited checks on your Twitter handle, plus eight freesearches for friends or competitors, and the basic analytics I mentioned above.

The basic account adds unlimited searches and advanced analytics. It also allows youto manually block fake accounts and track up to five friends.

With the premium account, you can auto-block fake accounts and track up to 15friends.

#2: FakefollowersFakefollowers is one of the free tools at Socialbakers, the social analytics company.

This tool will check a random sample of 100 of your followers against a list ofcriteria, including follower-to-following ratio, red flag (spammy) words, a highpercentage of tweets that are retweets or links and more. An account is defined as

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inactive if it hasn’t tweeted in the past 90 days or sent fewer than three tweets.

To get started, type in your Twitter handle—or the handle of someone you’recurious about—and click Check.

After you grant access to your Twitter account, you can view an analysis of yourTwitter followers.

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My fakefollow ers report on January 29, 2015.

Fakefollowers reports that 95% of my followers are good and 5% are suspicious orempty.

The report will also let you see some of the suspicious/empty accountsidentified during the scan. You can block those accounts by clicking the BlockAll button.

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Some suspicious accounts that follow me.

Fakefollowers is free to use. You can check up to 10 times a day, which isrecommended if you have a large following.

Socialbakers puts their margin of error (the only company that provided thisinformation) at 10-15%.

#3: TwitterAuditTwitterAudit is a tool developed by Dave Caplan and David Gross. It works by taking arandom sample of 5,000 followers from the Twitter account (making it great for largeaccounts) and assigns a score to each follower based on the ratio of followers tofollowing, the number of tweets and the date of the last tweet from the account.

To use TwitterAudit, type in any screen name in the search box and click Audit.After you authorize access to your Twitter account, click Run an Audit to seeyour results.

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My Tw itterAudit report on January 29, 2015.

As you can see in the report, TwitterAudit gave me an audit score of 92%. The auditscore is the number of my real followers divided by my total followers. The scandetermined that 89 of my followers are fake.

The quality score and real points of my follow ers.

The free version of TwitterAudit provides your score. When the pro version iseventually released, it will also let you hide your audit, block followers and re-audityour account at any time.

If you want to be notified when the pro version is available, click the TwitterAudit Probanner near the top of the page and enter your email address.

#4: IGExorcistDeveloped by Michael Landers, IGExorcist allows you to check for ghost followerson Instagram, which are the inactive or spam accounts that follow you. It works by

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cross-checking your followers against accounts you’re following to gauge interactionover the past 300 days.

Sign into your Instagram account from the IGExorcist website , then grantpermissions and then click the Request Rebuild button.

The IGExorcist w ebsite.

You’ll now be able to view a list of users who are inactive with you. However,because IGExorcist is so thorough—checking all of your followers—it can take a fewminutes for a request to begin processing, especially if other requests are already inthe queue.

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My IGExorcist results on February 2, 2015.

The main criteria for removal is when people are following you and you aren’t followingthem, and they haven’t liked or commented on a photo in the past 300 days. The appdoesn’t remove people you’re following.

If you want, you can bulk delete any of the users identified as inactive with you.The process takes about 2-3 seconds per follower. The default setting is to remove allof the followers identified, but you can protect a user by clicking on his or herpicture .

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Instagram users w ho haven’t interacted w ith me recently.

Keep in mind the app doesn’t know when someone started following you. If someonejust started following you and hasn’t yet interacted, their account will show up asinactive.

IGExorcist is free to use, and the developer accepts voluntary contributions.

Conclusion

Not all accounts flagged by these tools are fake, so be sure to check out theaccounts slated for deletion before hitting the go button. Some empty accountscould merely be people who have a Twitter account to follow news and sports, forexample.

What has been your experience with fake followers? Have you used one ofthese tools? Were you surprised at the results? Please leave your commentsbelow.

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Tags: f ake instagram f ollower, f ake twitter f ollower, f akef ollowers, f akers app, igexorcist, instagram, lisa karl, social media tool,

twitter, twitteraudit

ABOUT THE AUTHOR, Lisa Kar l

Lisa Kar l is a par tner and f ounder at Savvy Digital Bus iness , a

soc ial media s trategy f irm f ocus ing on small bus iness ow ners

needs . Follow Lisa on Tw itter @LisaMar ieKar l Othe r pos ts by

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23 Comments Social Media Examiner

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• Reply •

Internet Local Listings • 15 hours ago

I do my best to go through and remove the obvious ones--buy x followers for $15, etc. But I've been wanting to do amore thorough sweep, so this article was really timely. I'm going to give some of the free versions listed here a shotand see how it goes :)

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• Reply •

Lisa Karl • 14 hours ago> Internet Local Listings

Thanks so much and glad to give you some timely info! ;) △ ▽

• Reply •

Emily Sandstrom • 12 hours ago> Lisa Karl

Ones without a real face picture; ones that have activity only right after they are opened; ones thatdescribe themselves as 'really interested in Justin Bieber' or 'I just love life'; these are also easypieces to remove. Also ones you do not recall, and would not have friended. with someone who doesn't post in English. Why bother?

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• Reply •

Lisa Karl • 11 hours ago> Emily Sandstrom

If you don't speak the language someone is posting in, that makes sense. 1△ ▽

• Reply •

Mary Jane Kinkade • 12 hours ago

Very helpful! Thanks. △ ▽

• Reply •

Lisa Karl • 11 hours ago> Mary Jane Kinkade

Thank you Mary Jane, glad you found it helpful! △ ▽

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• Reply • △ ▽

• Reply •

The Product Poet • 12 hours ago

I just completed this and am in the process of culling about 2500 ghosts on Instagram. Who would have know I hadso many. Thanks for the article.

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• Reply •

Lisa Karl • 11 hours ago> The Product Poet

Wow! You are welcome! 1△ ▽

• Reply •

The Product Poet • 12 hours ago

Just completed a Fake Followers check. Out of 150,000 followers on Twitter, 96% legitimate. I've been trying to cullthrough these followers and always love it when Twitter does a purge of inactive/spam/bots. They did one last weekand they flushed out 7,500 followers. Makes my life easier.

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• Reply •

Lisa Karl • 11 hours ago> The Product Poet

Doesn't it? But it's a good idea to stay on top of it yourself as well. △ ▽

• Reply •

The Product Poet • 7 hours ago> Lisa Karl

Completely agree. I clear out in-active followers all the time on Twitter, but the Instagram one wasgreat.

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• Reply •

Karen Eisenbraun • 11 hours ago

Great article. I just unfollowed a bunch of inactive accounts last night so this was really helpful also. Although one ofmy "fake" followers on my account was my husband, who has never tweeted in his life, LOL!

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• Reply •

Lisa Karl • 10 hours ago> Karen Eisenbraun

Guess what? My husband is an inactive Twitter-er, too! :) △ ▽

Biz Tips • 10 hours ago

Thanks for sharing these excellent apps Lisa. At first I was too afraid to check my Twitter account but decided to giveit a go and to my surprise I had better scores with each app than @LisaMariaKarl showed. Very comforting - John

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• Reply •

it a go and to my surprise I had better scores with each app than @LisaMariaKarl showed. Very comforting - John △ ▽

• Reply •

Lisa Karl • 8 hours ago> Biz Tips

John--you shouldn't be afraid! Even if you had a large number of inactive/fake followers, better to clear themout. :) Glad to help!

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• Reply •

Wendy C. Wood • 10 hours ago

I guess what I'm not understanding is, why do we need to block fake accounts? How does the fake accounts impactour standing on twitter?

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• Reply •

Lisa Karl • 8 hours ago> Wendy C. Wood

Twitter, Instagram and other social networks are frowning on people boosting themselves as 'experts' byfaking a following. In addition, you could be subjecting your real followers to phasing and spam. Hope thathelps!

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• Reply •

Wendy C. Wood • 5 hours ago> Lisa Karl

ah ha, I suppose that makes sense. I need to get to work then! :) △ ▽

• Reply •

Sara Pemberton • 5 hours ago

Hi Lisa, any advice on removing or finding 'Fake Likes/Fans' on a Facebook page? Thanks! △ ▽

• Reply •

Vatsala Shukla • 3 hours ago

I normally track followers and their activity levels using Tweepi and it works well for me. I was intrigued by the toolTwitter Audit and had a shot at it. The good news is that 97% of my followers are genuine but the fact that 3% arefake means I need to have a closer look at it. Hopefully those individuals are inactive and not fake as in really fake.Thanks for the tips, Lisa.

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• Reply •

Gareth Bate • 2 hours ago

Is it safe to assume these are apps that are endorsed by Social Media Examiner? So they are legit and respectable? △ ▽

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• Reply •

Rajesh Haldar • 2 hours ago

It's great. need these types of tools for Facebook also. Kindly make a post or let us know once this type of tool will beout in market for cleaning up the FB Page. Thanks..

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• Reply •

james brown • 35 minutes ago

Great tools!! Really helpful to remove the unnecessary or fake followers.

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