Symantec’s security team has observed an intrusion of adult accounts on Instagram, harassing users and trying to trick them into joining various online dating, escort and adult webcam portals, but possibly other dangerous sites.
With Instagram boasting over 400 million registered users, spammers and scammers have gotten to work.
Everyday Instagram users must have already noticed an increase in spam on the network, with unknown users liking their photos, sending them comments, or following them. According to Symantec, an overwhelming majority of these profiles promote adult websites, but Softpedia has also observed a plethora of other services associated with these spam accounts. These services range from jewelry services to tech support services and everything else you can imagine. The goal for these campaigns is to make money for spammers through affiliate programs or by driving traffic to malicious websites, where the scammers can be paid per infection. According to Satnam Narang, Senior Security Response Manager at Symantec, who analyzed the influx of adult spam accounts, most profiles follow three patterns. The first type of profile has only a photo, a short description, and a link. The second type of profile is like the first, but includes many photos, always stolen from other Instagram profiles or random websites on the Internet. The third type is a profile full of ads, with a single image, divided into thematic sections, so as to reconstruct the original photo on the main Instagram page. Symantec says that this type of adult profiles can also be found in other spam accounts. These profiles are easy to spot since most of them promote adult websites with an obvious link, with shortened URLs or with links containing randomly generated strings. “Unlike previous examples that we have detected, fake profiles on Instagram are not robots,” explains Mr. Narang, saying that there does not appear to be any kind of automated behavior behind the activity on these profiles. Symantec recommends that users not interact or visit any link promoted by these profiles, even if the spam account interacts with them, following their profile and constantly liking their photos!
