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How is it possible that overnight an account of a small influencer has gained many followers and all their publications are full of 'likes' with hardly any messages from their followers?

The answer is simple: although it seems a lie, bots are still the order of the day on social networks, and with the popularity of Instagram or Tik Tok, the old trick of 'buying' influence continues to be the order of the day.

The cybersecurity company vpnMentor have discovered a click farm made up of 10,000 fake Instagram accounts, used automatically to inflate the statistics of followers and 'likes' of social network accounts and influence ad revenue.

The click farm discovered by researchers Noam Rotem and Ran Locar operates globally, but is based in Kazakhstan and Armenia, taking advantage of the lack of digital regulation that most developing countries have.

As reported by vpnMentor in a statement sent to Europa Press, these 10,000 accounts work in an automated way, "with hardly any need for human intervention."

Each of them has their own avatar, bio, email and even verification SMS, for which they used thousands of local SIM cards.

This group of fake accounts operates around the world through 'proxies' and they carry out interactions with Instagram posts and profiles, increasing the numbers of followers and 'likes' in an illicit way and without looking like spam.

This time, this campaign focuses on using automated accounts to click on paid ads, in order to modify the organic statistics of the social network.

Click farms are often hired by individuals or companies to inflate their advertising statistics and earn higher income, and violate the terms of use of social networks such as Instagram, which prohibit non-organic activity.

Sometimes they can even be used to spread misinformation campaigns and fake news.

"Click farms and other forms of fraud and misinformation are rampant on Instagram, Facebook and other popular social networks", has warned vpnMentor, that given the difficulties to solve this problem of social networks, recommends greater awareness among users about this type of manipulation.

Investigators discovered the database on September 21, and that same day they contacted Facebook - the company to which Instagram belongs -, which closed it a day later.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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