How to prevent social media impersonation

Corporate identity theft or brand abuse on social media encompasses a variety of tactics ranging from fake profiles impersonating the brand to distributing malicious content under the brand’s name.

What is social media impersonation?

In the digital age, social media has become integral to our lives and businesses, providing opportunities to connect, share content, and interact with diverse communities, including customers.

However, this growing reliance has also increased phishing, fraud, and scam campaigns in these virtual environments. These criminal practices have evolved, including corporate identity theft to deceive users and customers and obtain confidential information or illicit enrichment.

Social media impersonation, or brand abuse, involves creating fake accounts that impersonate the official profiles of well-known companies or relevant individuals.

In organizations, impersonators often meticulously copy logos, images, and communication styles to appear authentic. They often use active brand communication or promotion campaigns, copying them to attract customers maliciously. Its primary purpose is to trick users into revealing personal or financial information or to damage the company’s image.

The consequences of corporate identity theft are often severe. Customers lose trust in the brand, which decreases sales and engagement. In addition, the organization may face legal problems if customers suffer financial losses due to impersonation or if it has been used to commit other illicit acts.

Threats of brand impersonation on social networks

The usurpation of corporate identity on social networks entails a series of threats to organizations:

Profile forgery

Profile falsification is the basis of corporate identity theft on social networks. Criminals create fake profiles that mimic legitimate companies to trick users into obtaining personal or financial information.

These fake profiles can become very convincing and even indistinguishable without research. They use logos, images, and brand language similar to actual companies to appear authentic. They often post relevant content to appear authentic and gain followers.

Once they have gained users’ trust, these profiles are often used for various scams. These can include promoting fake offers, asking for payment details for non-existent products, or directing users to fraudulent websites where they are asked to provide personal information.

Phishing through social networks

In the context of social media, fraudsters use sophisticated techniques to send direct messages or posts that appear to be from a recognized organization or institution whose identity they have impersonated. Cybercriminals have adapted these tactics to the social media environment, taking advantage of users’ trust and familiarity with these platforms. Thus, they use social engineering tactics to trick users into obtaining the sensitive information they seek.

In a typical phishing scenario, criminals create fake profiles or pages that resemble those of a legitimate company. Then, they send enticing messages or posts that may include special offers, contests, or fake security alerts to lure users into clicking on malicious links.

Once the user clicks on the link, they may be directed to a fake website that looks like the company’s official website. Then, they are ordered to enter personal or financial information, which the criminals collect.

Posting malicious content

One of the most damaging threats of brand abuse on social media is the posting of malicious content.

Malicious content can take many forms, from false and misleading information to links to dangerous websites or malicious software. It can damage a company’s reputation, sow discord, create conflicts, deceive customers, and steal valuable information.

Service Impersonation

Service impersonation is another significant threat to social media in the context of corporate identity theft. Criminals create accounts that impersonate the brand’s customer service, directing users to fake or dangerous sites or tricking them into falling for a scam.

These fraudulent services range from non-existent product offers to false customer support promises. Users, believing they are interacting with the real company, provide personal or financial information, make payments, or make decisions based on incorrect information.

Service spoofing significantly damages an organization’s reputation. Customers who have been deceived often associate their negative experiences with the actual company, even considering that they have some responsibility for their lack of sufficient vigilance and protection. This can lead to a loss of trust and loyalty.

There may also be a direct financial impact. If customers are tricked into buying fraudulent products or services, sales decrease. In addition, the organization may face significant costs in mitigating the damage, restoring its reputation, or legally proving its lack of responsibility for the crime.

Social media impersonation prevention

Preventing social media impersonation is critical to protecting customers and your organization. A good strategy on how to avoid social media spoofing has to include:

Monitor social media

Continuously monitoring social networks allows organizations to detect fraudulent use of their corporate identity and prevent cybercriminals from using the brand to deceive customers with impunity.

The continuous monitoring and analysis of the data it provides also serves to identify emerging patterns and trends of brand abuse and provide proactive responses to the threat.

Establish a proactive protection strategy

When an organization has a proactive strategy to protect its brand on social networks, the chances of success from the threat of brand abuse with malicious objectives decrease.

The proactive strategy allows the organization to stay ahead of brand abuse, detecting in real-time the usurpation of identity on social networks so that the organization can cancel it before it causes significant damage.

You may be interested in our publication→ Proactive security: what is it and why use it to prevent and detect threats and cyberattacks?

Being active on social media

Although it may seem paradoxical, not opening corporate profiles on different social networks or remaining inactive on them not only does not protect against identity theft but also favors it.

Having very active profiles on social networks allows users to become familiar with the brand’s communication and more easily detect imitators. In addition, active profiles make checking a profile’s integrity simple, which raises suspicions among users.

Protecting the brand with advanced technologies

The continued sophistication of cyberattacks requires organizational protection that is up to par and uses advanced strategies and technologies, such as artificial intelligence and automation, to provide the necessary responses at the right time.

AI and machine-learning-based solutions identify fake profiles and malicious activity more effectively and quickly than traditional methods. In addition, they can automatically track active or dormant fraudulent campaigns on social networks until they are eliminated.

Consequences of brand impersonation on social networks

Brand impersonation often has severe consequences for an organization, such as:

Financial losses

Corporate identity theft on social networks leads to a decrease in brand value due to the loss of trust and a reduction in revenue due to the loss of sales due to deceived customers. After a successful corporate identity theft on social networks, the organization must invest in powerful communication campaigns to regain some of its client´s trust.

Furthermore, when cybercriminals use the stolen corporate identity to engage in illegal activities, fees are incurred to cover timely legal actions.

Reputational damage

A brand’s reputation has a direct impact on its value.

Corporate identity impersonation on social media damages an organization’s reputation and brand. Fraudsters use the company’s brand to spread false information or engage in unethical and criminal behavior, negatively affecting the organization’s image.

Legal issues

Corporate impersonation leads to legal issues when fraudsters use the brand to engage in illegal activities. The organization will initially be held liable until it proves impersonation.

In addition, defrauded customers may consider that the organization is indirectly at fault for the deception due to a lack of sufficient vigilance and protection and legally or administratively claim restitution for their economic loss. This also implies a legal defense.

Loss of customer trust

After interacting with fake accounts that have impersonated the corporate identity or hearing about their existence, customers perceive that the organization is not taking adequate measures to protect its brand and, indirectly, them from scams.

They are then wary of interacting with the company on social media, proceed to avoid it, and decrease the likelihood that they will remain loyal to it.

Protect your company from social media impersonation with Kartos by Enthec

Kartos, the Cyber Intelligence platform developed by Enthec, continuously and automatically monitors the web and social networks to detect domains, subdomains, websites, and social profiles identical or similar to your organization’s. Thanks to its self-developed Artificial Intelligence, false positives in findings are eliminated.

In addition, Kartos monitors the phishing, fraud, and scam campaigns with corporate identity impersonation detected until their deactivation, with identification of the countries in which they are active, data, and alarms in real-time.

Since this year, Kartos has also offered a Takedown Service for fraudulent social profiles, domains and subdomains, and cloned websites detected by the platform.

Contact us if you want more information on how Kartos can help you protect your brand from cloning and abuse on the internet and social networks.