Cheating in Facebook & Twitter competitions

I blog about competitions because I enjoy it. I’ve seen how comping can change people’s lives and I want to encourage more people to get involved with this amazing hobby. I want my blog readers and Facebook friends to experience the challenge of entering, the nervous anticipation, and the huge excitement if you’re a winner. I want to show promoters what a joy it is to host a creative promotion and what great interaction you can have with the fans. I try to stay upbeat about my hobby, but recently that’s been getting more and more difficult. I didn’t want to waste my time blogging about cheating, but I know that hundreds – possibly thousands – of you will read this blog post, so I should take advantage of this captive audience to warn you about what’s going on.

This post has been in progress for some time, but the sheer volume of cheating on Facebook and Twitter recently has regrettably made it more urgent for me to put this information where people can access and share it. Cheats using multiple profiles, and those who pass off others’ work as their own, are ruining our hobby and giving compers a bad name – and it’s up to us to try and stop it. Before I begin, I must stress that not EVERY voting, referral or photo competition is won by a cheat – but there ARE an awful lot of dishonest folk out there who will stoop very low to try and bag a prize.

Compers need to be on guard and not be afraid to Report/Block if we find someone cheating. We also need to warn promoters about what’s going on! When you see that dreaded status update “We thought it would be fun for our Facebook fans to choose the winner by voting….” then it’s time to act. Many agencies and promoters are still very naive and believe that their super-duper fun new Facebook competition will be won by someone who plays fair, when unfortunately that isn’t always the case! Promoters – scroll down to the bottom of this post for advice on running a fair competition that won’t be targeted by cheats.

So what’s the truth? There are thousands of people out there tricking us, many of them sitting happily on our friends list, clicking on all the competition links we share, then going on to win prizes by deception….

Please note: I’m no technical wizard or computer geek. What I write here is what I have found from months of research and a few informative Google search results! If I’ve made errors please let me know.

Let’s start with Facebook profiles

• Compers often have a second profile for themselves with a similar name. This is usually to keep their personal life separate from their comping account, but regardless of this it BREAKS FACEBOOK TERMS OF USE. They may or may not be comping from both accounts, but the temptation is there, particularly in a voting competition…
• Cheats might go on to set up accounts for family members, or even pets, then log in and use these accounts to enter competitions or to vote in competitions. A lot of Facebook compers think this is acceptable behaviour! Remember that you need to be over 13 to have a Facebook account, and it must be in your real name.
• Cheats might then set up some new accounts with fake names, and a profile photo taken from a random website. If they’re NOT very clever, they’ll use traceable images. (See the screenshot below – comper Lucy Grove is actually VAFA member Davina Connors-Calhaem)
• If a cheat has money then they can go to a site like www.accountheadquarters.com and simply buy Facebook profiles (PVAs means ‘Phone Verified Accounts’ – these will also be set up from separate IP addresses so Facebook won’t pick up on it). The more they have to spend, the more realistic the profiles – friends, education, photos etc. can be added. Apparently there’s even software to allow these fake profile pages to be ‘humanised’ with regular automatic updates! If the cheat’s budget is smaller, they might try www.freelancer.co.uk or www.blackhatworld.com – see this example request where someone is hoping to get 1000 accounts for just $50!

So how to check someone’s profile?

• Start with a reverse image search on their profile photo – right-click it and copy the link, then go to www.google.com/imghp, click the camera icon and paste in the image URL. You’ll soon see if that photo appears elsewhere on the internet – click the top result to see where it originates. If it’s a photo of a person, often you will find it alongside the real person’s name on a blog or website.
• If their friends list is public, click through and check the profiles. If all the profiles have the same friends in common, chances are they’re linked and are all fakes created by the same person. Clever cheats will make sure that the friends list is private!
• Do they have an unusual name? Check it at www.192.com which has all electoral roll details. If it’s not there then that doesn’t definitely mean they’re fake, but it’s certainly possible…
• If their wall is public, check the posts – are there lots of votes? If so, it’s a profile set up specifically for that purpose. If they have friends on their list, do all their walls have the same comps in the same order? Are they linked? (see screenshot below)
• Can you see what pages they like? If there are Vote Exchange groups, or any Asian pages (Mumcentre Singapore is a favourite!) they have been voting in foreign contests.

What if I’m certain it’s a fake account?

• Click on Report/Block – this is on the left hand menu on the old-style profile pages, or in the cog drop down menu under the cover photo on the new Timeline pages
• Choose ‘This timeline/profile is pretending to be someone or is fake’, then ‘Does not represent a real person’
• You can add up to 300 characters of extra information – here you can link to the creator’s original Facebook profile. If you’re not sure who’s behind the fakes, you could post links to any other profiles you think are connected. If the photo belongs to someone else, post the link to the real owner. I usually add ‘this is a fake profile set up by XXX specifically to enter contests’.

It takes several people flagging profiles before Facebook will investigate these reports (you can imagine how many they must get) but it’s only by doing this that we can make a difference. Don’t be afraid to report these fake accounts!

What if I’m suspicious – but not sure?

• Bookmark and screen grab the profile page and save it with their current Facebook name. Go back and check a few months later – is it deleted, or has the name changed? Three of the people who beat me in ‘Most Likes’ comps last year have now completely removed the Facebook profiles I bookmarked – an admission of guilt perhaps? Frustratingly, I imagine the culprits have already set up new profiles to comp from. Here’s a winning post from last March showing how one lucky lady has completely changed identity since winning….

• Look for similarities in the way they comment, misspell words or tweet – one cheat was recently caught out when she neglected to use spaces after commas on all 37 of her Twitter account descriptions!
• If you have time to start investigations, you can do some good research at www.192.com and www.pipl.com. Also, Google their name along with ‘congratulations’. You’ll usually find plenty of Facebook results. If you suspect several profiles are fake, google the names together – they may have been tagged in Facebook competition photos together and you can work out who’s behind them.
• If you can’t prove an account is fake, then don’t report it. Many real people have Facebook accounts with no photo and only a few competition posts on their wall, because they’re helping friends out.

How about Twitter?

• With no Facebook-style phone verification system, Twitter cheats can easily set up lots of fake profiles.
• In free Tweetdeck software, there are lots of handy icons across the top, one for each Twitter account – highlight them all, then paste the RT text into the box and as if by magic, they can tweet the same text from multiple accounts at once…
• Autotweet software can also be used to program tweets – some compers will retweet the same competition over and over again using this method. This isn’t cheating unless the Twitter competition rules state that it’s one tweet per person – the problem is, most Twitter comps don’t have Terms and Conditions!
• Some ‘bots’ on Twitter are programmed to Retweet any tweets with the word ‘Win’. As a result they often win Twitter comps! Some abandoned bots – like @sunian314 – still win regularly, but never claim their prizes.

And how can I report a Twitter cheat?

• Use this form to submit a detailed report – you could paste in a list of links to that person’s multiple profiles.

Now for a different kind of cheater – the plagiarist!

• The plagiarist will enter competitions using someone else’s work. It could be a poem, a photo, a recipe or a story.
• The problem with photo comps is that some cheats will find a good and relevant photo to submit, so as a result the promoter – who doesn’t think to check – often chooses it as a winner! Recently Laithwaites and Dizolve announced winners of their creative photo comps, only for a busybody (…yes, that would be me!) to come along with links to the blogs that the winning photos were stolen from. I don’t usually out cheats in public but on this particular day I was fuming!
• Some of the worst examples have been where people have entered a sob story that has been taken from a Google search – or used a photo of a dilapidated bathroom or scruffy room and claimed it as their own (see Britain’s Worst Bathroom)
• The example below is taken from the Co-op comp where you had to make a gingerbread man and upload a photo to Facebook. Not only is this a Googled image, the entrant lied and said he’d made them with his kids – this isn’t an example of a clever cheat!

I’m suspicious! How do I find out if an entry is stolen?

• Use Google to search for stories, poems, or recipes. Put key words or sentences in speech marks to ensure that Google finds them in a string together.
• Use Google’s reverse image search to look for suspect photos. If an image is pixellated, very small, or an odd shape (eg. square as opposed to 6×4 ratio) it may well have been pinched from elsewhere.

What happens if I see a cheater win a Facebook competition, or leading in a voting competition?

• If the company has upgraded to Timeline, there is likely to be a Message button on their page for you to contact them. Tell them your concerns, with links to evidence or screenshots if possible. If there’s no Message button or contact details, ask them politely on their wall for a contact email. Explain yourself clearly and try not to confuse them – link them to this blog if you think it will help.
• Only post on a Facebook wall as a last resort. If the promoter does the right thing and disqualifies the entrant they would rather it kept quiet. If their wall goes crazy with accusations and screenshots, they might decide never to run another competition – which would be a disappointment for all of us!

My profile looks a bit fake – what should I do?

• If possible, use a photo of yourself on your profile photo – if you’re shy, it could be the back of your head or a photo from your childhood!
• If you don’t want to use a photo of yourself, use one that you’ve taken so it’s unique and won’t be picked up on a reverse image search.
• Use your real name on your Facebook or Twitter profile.
• Add some comping friends that you know in real life or forums
• Try to make posts that aren’t all competition entries!
• Interact with brands on their wall or with @ replies on Twitter

What we really need to do is PREVENT the cheats from winning competitions – and put them off even entering them!

Here’s some advice for promoters:

• Stick to Facebook promotion guidelines and use an App. Like/Share competitions are a magnet for cheaters, who will Share on all their different profiles as they are so easy to enter! By using an App, and asking for email addresses, names, and other details, you’re making it harder for the cheats to enter, so hopefully they might not bother…
• If you’re running a recipe competition, ask for your product to be included in the recipe. Also ask for a photo of the finished dish to be uploaded, INCLUDING your product!
• If you’re running a photo competition, you could ask for the person submitting the entry to feature in the photo. You could also ask for your logo or product to be in the shot. Make it clear whether you will allow retouched/Photoshoppped images – because people WILL submit them!
• Before approving photo entries or announcing the winner, do a reverse image search on Google at www.google.com/imghp to check the entry is original.
• DO NOT run a ‘most referrals wins’ competition. Cheats with multiple profiles will almost always run away with it – check the wall posts and click through to profiles to see if they’re real people. You could use Offerpop and run a competition where every entrant needs to refer 2 friends to enter the draw – it’s much fairer.
• If your promotion is a game where the aim is to get the highest score or fastest time, appreciate that there are many ways people can cheat by slowing down Flash games, using macros or speed hacking. Perhaps you could put everyone who gets to a certain score/level into a random draw rather than rewarding only the fastest player.
• DO NOT run a voting competition. Even if you think you’re making it fair by incorporating judging, random prizes, or prizes for voters, it’s still likely that a cheater will win. If the cheater loses the top spot or gets discovered, they may even sabotage the contest by posting fake vote requests for fellow competitors to get them disqualified (this happened to Littlewoods and Direct Holidays recently). Even in competitions with an initial judging stage, the shortlisted entrants sometimes get so desperate to win that they resort to buying votes on sites like fiverr.com. For an example of extreme cheating in recent voting competitions, see my post about IKEA and Yazoo Milkshake.
• If you ARE running a voting competition, check the IP addresses and timing of the votes, and read the excellent blog post about how to detect fraud at http://www.snipe.net/2012/01/detecting-fraud-in-facebook-contests/ – be warned though, cheats will use proxys to change or hide their IP address, and many work as a group to vote, so the patterns look less suspicious.
• If you’re running a Twitter competition, check the guidelines. Make sure you tweet a link to some Terms and Conditions and state that it’s only one entry per person.
• Don’t run a simple RT competition on Twitter. Ask people to complete a tiebreaker or do something that requires more effort and a unique reply. Use a unique hashtag to track entries. You could try Competwition – it’s free!
• If you DO run a RT competition then choose the winner using something like Tweetreach (this costs $20 for a single report) which gives you an accurate breakdown of ALL entrants and excludes multiple entries. Twitterdraw is a free alternative, but unfortunately you can’t access the full list of Tweets so it’s hard to know if it’s accurate enough. If you know someone technical, you could ask them to write a script that regularly downloads all tweets using your unique hashtag, then eliminate duplicates and use a randomiser to choose a winner.
• If you choose your Twitter winner simply by scrolling through your list of recent @ replies then you’re likely to choose someone who has tweeted multiple times, ensuring they appear regularly on that list – and the people who tweeted early on won’t get a look in!
• When you’ve chosen your winner, check their Facebook or Twitter profile page – it might be obvious that it’s a fake profile.
• Be suspicious if you get a winner’s details and they don’t match their Facebook or Twitter name! Be even more suspicious if two of your winners have the same address… chances are they’re NOT students sharing a house!

Finally, I LOVE my hobby. It’s so much fun, and most compers feel that way. But with all the cheating going on, and so much bitching and complaining on Facebook walls, promoters will think twice about running competitions! Let’s do what we can to deter and punish these cheats, and make Facebook a fun place to be again

FURTHER READING: IKEA & Yazoo sweep the cheating under the carpet.