Questionnaire results

These are the results to our questionnaire in chart format with percentages underneath. The questionnaire was created in an attempt to judge how successful this project has been.

The story of Thomas Montgomery & Brian Barrett

The story of Thomas Montgomery & Brian Barrett is an odd one. We did some research into it and it proves unless you've met the person you are talking to online or have video chatted with them, how do you really know who you are talking to?

Barrett, 22, was an aspiring industrial arts teacher, an accomplished high school athlete who'd coached Little League all summer and helped his father coach soccer. Quiet and unassuming is how those who knew him described the Buffalo State College student. This was until he was shot dead when he had finished a shift at Dynabrade Corp.

Barrett's 47-year-old co-worker and friend, Thomas Montgomery, was charged with Barrett's murder. The motive, said investigators, was jealousy over Barrett's budding Internet relationship with the same 18-year-old woman Montgomery had been wooing since the previous year.

What neither man knew was that the woman was really a 40-something West Virginia mother who was using her daughter's identity to attract Internet suitors. She stated afterwards she would never have met either man

Makes you think doesn't it… We would love to hear some of your feedback on this story, please leave comments below.

Which is real?

Do you think you would have been able to tell which ones were fake? All look scarily real if you ask us… sometimes its harder to tell if an account is fake on Twitter due to lack of pictures and personal information!

Other social media platforms

Today we looked into the use of fake profiles on different social media platforms. The two we looked at were apps available on the iPhone called Snapchat and Tinder.

Snapchat is an app that allows you to send images to people that you add but only for up to 10 seconds and then the image disappears. Now why would anybody create a fake account on this social media platform when the whole point of it is to send pictures of yourself to one another. After looking into it, it seems the fake accounts are created to spam Snapchat users. These spam chats as they have started to be called are usually of naked images of women. While the photo may vary, each snap includes the caption, “Add me on KIK for nudes swap ;)” along with a username on Kik Messenger, an instant messaging application for mobile devices. The idea we guess being that some gullible users downloading the messenger service and spending money on it therefore making the creators of the fake accounts money.


The second app we looked at is called Tinder. A profile appears on screen with images of a person, the app allows the user to anonymously like or pass them. If two users like each other then it results in a "match" and Tinder introduces the two users and opens a chat. So again, why would anybody go through with the effort to create a fake profile unless its money motivated? 

When we looked into it it seems that similarly to Snapchat the fake profiles encourage users to sign up to pornagraphic website/ messenger services which cost them money. However it appears Tinder is also being used to encourage users to download mobile games which again, cost money. This is arguably a clever way of advertising, using a fake account of a good looking woman to encourage naive men into downloading the game. Therefore we think the use of fake accounts in this instant is actually quite clever.

Fake Profile?

Again one of us as been added by an account which we are 100 percent sure is a fake profile.
The tell tale signs are all there, this profile has only 4 images on the whole account, they are all of the same person and there are no photos where they could have friends tagged in. The huge giveaway is the fact this account has 0 friends and we certainly don't know this person, so unless someone can vouch for him he is being rejected.

Let us know what you think by commenting below.. definitely a fake?

Real/ Fake Account tweets

We again tweeted off our Real / Fake accounts Twitter profile today. This time we tweeted an image of profile of somebody we know, so we know the profile is real.

We got a much better response this time, receiving interaction off of 9 Twitter users. 7 saying they thought the profile is real and 2 saying they thought it was fake. We found this interesting that there was a slight difference of opinion amongst our followers.

We wanted to further investigate as to why 2 of our followers thought the profile would be fake. After direct messaging these followers (one replied) they said they felt it could be a fake profile as they didn't state where they worked on their profile and all of the images that can be seen are group shots and none are of just the individual.

After researching fake profiles thoroughly we actually feel that group photos quite often mean that the individual is who they say they are, particularly if their friends are tagged in those images.

Parody Accounts

We have been looking into parody accounts and whether they can be deemed fake or not. Our initial thoughts were no they aren't, it is pretty obvious when an account is a parody by the tweets they send and the amount of followers the account has.

However when looking into the accounts, it seems they are becoming very popular with some parody accounts having over 1 million followers. One we particularly looked at was @Queen_UK, this account has 1.11 million followers, it's own website and merchandise. The account clearly suggests that its a parody by stating their location as 'fictional', not that you could imagine the queen using Twitter regularly in the first place.

There are so many parody accounts of celebrities out there but how is it that these celebrities don't mind that people create an account using their name and picture and begin sending tweets. We decided to look into Twitters terms and conditions as to why they don't shut down the accounts as they are impersonating somebody else. When looking at Twitters terms and conditions it states that they won't remove the account if :

• The user shares your name but has no other commonalities 
• The profile clearly states its not affiliated with or connected to any similarly named individuals

We concluded that the majority of these accounts don't actually do either of these things so therefore maybe Twitter should take greater action against these accounts, particularly if the person involved wants it removed.