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How Not to Follow Fake Profiles on Twitter

Twitter has to be one of the amazing innovations in recent times giving us realtime status of things happening around us. We all love to Follow and be Followed by people we know, like and relate to.

Apart from friends, relatives and colleagues who doesn’t want to follow favorite actors? sports-persons? politicians? etc and be updated on whats going on with them as well?

However, are you sure the Lewis Hamilton or Priyanka Chopra or Shashi Tharoor you are following are real and not fake? Are you following them just because your friend is following?

Here are some tips that will help you in determining if the Twitterati that you want to follow on Twitter is real or fake.

1. Is it a Verified Account

Twitter is currently beta testing ‘Verified Accounts’, wherein they confirm the identity of the person, who is tweeting using that account. As of now, it is limited to some well known personalities who have had issues with impersonation or identity confusions. A typical verified account on Twitter would look like below (Notice the blue-white check mark):

Very useful if the folk is a celebrity. Read more about Twitter Verified accounts: http://twitter.com/help/verified

2. What is the Web page of the Account holder?

Look at the Web URL posted under the twitter profile to see if it has any web page listed. A smart search on the web can reveal if it is indeed the official page or not. Again, a useful tip in case of a well known personality aka Celebrity. Some folks also point to their Facebook profiles. Again, search the web to find out if it is indeed authentic or not. Beware of any landing pages that look suspicious.

3. Look at the Tweet times.

This is interesting. All tweets have timestamp on them. Based on the time and location of the user, you can sometimes make out the fake one. Not many people would tweet in the middle of the night or early morning like 4 AM etc, atleast not on a regular basis. I had an interesting time while determining a genuineness of one such profile:

While watching the Arsenal vs Stoke match, I was a bit turned off by the horrific injury caused to Aaron Ramsey by a reckless tackle. The next morning I was looking for the info on the extent of injury and recovery time. The Gunners (Arsenal are also called as Gunners, just in case you are wondering from where did Gunners pop up) community at a social networking site had a scrap from a fan/member that Aaron Ramsey had tweeted it would take 7 months. That really ticked me off. I looked at the supposed profile of Aaron Ramsey on twitter and I had my doubts then. It was later confirmed by the timeline of tweets.

The time difference between India and UK is 5.3 hours. Twitter timeline said it was tweeted about 2 hours back. Local time (IST) when I checked was 11 AM. Which human being with a broken leg, undergoing critical treatment would think of tweeting? I think its insane. And the verified twitter account of Aaron Ramsey is here

4. Look at the Display picture

The display picture also provides a valuable information. Is it the real close up photo? or is it the twitter’s bird? For a celebrity to put a fancy or a snazzy picture of theirs from their movie posture etc is remote. Or a profile with no photo should raise the flags.

5. Look at the list of Followers and Following.

Sometimes the list of people in the Following and Followers list can provide valuable information. If its just one or two that he is following and if they too have a so similar profile, you know it is fake. Also look at who is following them…if it is a series of profiles with no photo or strange photo can be a good indicator.

NOTE: Please note that the above information is not all inclusive or foolproof. These are some basic guidelines to help you prevent follow ANY fake profiles caused due to identity theft. Please exercise caution, take due care while following ANY profile.

Appreciate your feedback. Kindly use the comments form to let me know of what you think.

And No, this is not a fake account 🙂

February is the month which many people look forward to various reasons – valentines day, fight between pink chaddis vs love brigade, shortest month etc. I too look forward to it for couple of reasons…one, it has my better half’s Birthday..for second, read on for more..

Many of you might have heard or had been to Vasantahabba, which used to happen on the first saturday of February at Nrityagram. Vasantahabba is a festival that happens from dusk to dawn, yes you read it right! Starts from late afternoon and goes on till the sunrise of the next day…far off from the city, amidst the lush greenery of Hesaraghatta. Nrityagram is a residential dance gurukul started by Late Protima Gauri Bedi. The word Hesara ghatta in Kannada literally means Green place. You will have to visit the place to believe it…and btw VasantaHabba in Kannada means Spring Festival 🙂

It was amazing to see hordes of people came in blazing february sun to be seated on the lawns for an event that started after the dusk! One had to travel on the Tumkur road and take a right turn at the 8th mile, and continue on that road…I don’t know if the same landmarks still exist with the pace Bengaluru is growing. I remember there was a railway crossing, Army area and many villages. For Nrityagram’s own handwritten route map, check this out

The last event happened in 2004. Some of the performances that’s still fresh in my memory has to be Kadri Gopalanathan playing Saxophone during the midnight, Antaragni (Raghu Dixit’s band before it got disbanded and he formed TheRaghuDixitProject) which followed later, Belliappa’s Dollu Kunitha and Bhuta Singh’s Bhangra were during the late evenings! Imagine listening to fusion of music nightlong amidst the stars, open space and the energetic crowd…

But my most unforgettable memory of Vasantahabba 2004, has to be that of listening to Indian Ocean, especially the song Bhor. That Moment: Stars were fading, Sun still rising, chirping of birds, dewdrops on the grass blades, fresh air, smell of the red soil and voice of Aseem! It was a perfect natural ambience!

Indian Ocean belted out Kandisa, Kya Maloom, Ma rewa …if my memory hasn’t faded. One note worth mentioning is just as Indian Ocean began to check acoustics they ran into this trouble where tuning was just not getting in line with the audio systems….Aseem was getting restless and so were the crowd….but once he started, it was sheer magic.

One of the other things I cannot forget about Vasantahabba is that the young crowd showed amazing maturity in terms of behaviour and respecting the rules despite being high on booze and grass.

Vasantahabbas’ one of the only events where the promotion of talent held centrestage and also provided a rare outing for the mortals like us to be in sync with music and the nature. Events of such magnitude where people come in the range of 30 to 40 thousand requires tremendous efforts and co-ordination and since Nrityagram does not charge entry fees, it has to rely a lot on sponsors and volunteers. When I once called up Nrityagram to see if the event would happen again, the answer was in negative…..

As I came back home the Sunday morning, I could still feel the smell and dust of the red sand on my blue jeans…..It was so fresh, Wish that spring returns again!