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An Australian Instagram user fell victim to a pornbot scam when malicious actors stole her identity. It took a month of relentless effort to get the fake account taken down by Instagram.
Nurie Salim, a social media user based in Australia, recently had her identity stolen by a nefarious pornbot on Instagram.
“Like many people in Sydney, I spent August 2021 in Delta lockdown, stuck at home, endlessly scrolling on my phone and clinging to the internet as a lifeline. While you can meet all sorts of people online, I did not expect to meet myself, or rather the ‘pornbot’ version of me. I hadn’t been hacked, I hadn’t clicked on a phishing link, but I’d still fallen victim to a malicious scam making its rounds on Instagram,” Salim said.
Salim has observed friends, ex-colleagues, and members of the Australian cosplay scene for weeks posting screenshots of their phony profiles to their Instagram stories and pleading with their followers to ban and report them. She had always contributed in her way.
Suddenly the fake Nurie Salim account popped up.
“It barely made sense, for starters, my photos were pretty tame, and the photos scraped by the pornbot were even more so,” Salim said.
Fake accounts made by pornbots have increased as Instagram has gained popularity, but they still employ tried-and-true techniques. The posts they generate typically involve captions of a sexual nature, along with links to external adult sites to generate revenue.
And although some of the pornbot accounts may be conventional “bots” managed by computers, many more are run by real people trying to make a little more money on the side.
The number of young people who use Instagram and follow brands they enjoy, which exposes them to this behavior, makes it particularly disturbing.
This case highlights the need for social media sites to implement more robust security protocols and for users to be aware of potential risks when using them.
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