How can I distinguish fake accounts from real ones on Twitter?

[Caitlyn_1]

Can you suggest some great accurate ways by which I can track fake ad real accounts?

[Amara Laurent]

There are plenty of tools that claims that they identify fake followers.
But the tool must be accurate and worth investing in! I personally use Followeraudit to identify fake or real followers of any public Twitter account.

Reasons why I use it –

1. Its gives accurate results.
2. The results are published within few minutes.
3. Affordable pricing plans.
4. With its affordable plans they also provide with other features which I think is best
5. You also get a list of all the fake and inactive followers.

[rproffitt]

I think if you can track where the account was created from, that's a good report.

Why? I'm reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency

[Dani]

As a twitter user, you can't tell where another twitter account was created from, nor do you have direct access to the twitter database. You have to just look at it at face value, such as how many tweets it has, how many followers it has, who the followers are, etc.

[rproffitt]

While one can disguise your location, https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/twitter-advanced-search does support filtering locations so it is possible to create a tool to investigate the twitter user base.

[Dani]

That doesn't let you filter people by their home location. It lets you filter specific tweets where the user chose to specify their location as part of the tweet. (e.g. to tweet that they visited a particular place)

[rproffitt]

The data you can mine using the link provided plus other methods do seem to let you build up the information you would need to build a profile about fake accounts.

Mind you I am writing about creation of a system and not about what is out there today. There are companies and apps already out there. My thoughts are "How could we do this ourselves?"

As to direct accesss to the twitter database well, let's not get into facebook and twitter data leaks or more such as
https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2020/07/18/twitter-hackers-successfully-manipulated-a-small-number-of-employees-stole-personal-data-from-at-least-8-targeted-accounts/

Given some cash and a pretty face I bet you can get the data you want from almost any company.

[rproffitt]

Caitlyn seems to work hard to talk up that app on the web. It's almost like they work there!

[Rythorian]

If they are "Egg Heads" it's a good sign. I'm Referring to the Twitter user in question not taking the time to upload a profile image.
They use stock profile image.
No Bio.
Duplicate Tweets.
Screen Name /URL Combination anomalies.
Incoherant tweets.
Hasn't tweeted in months/years.
Follows a ridiculous amount of people (in the thousand range)
Avoids interactions with others.
Low followers or none at all.
Unrealistic amount of tweets.

I personally have a better method to identify someone, but it rides a thin red line as far as legality goes. If it seems wrong, I'd go with your instincts. Instincts have served us well for centuries...lol.