Detection of Fake Accounts in Instagram using Machine Learning

With the advent of the Internet and social media, while hundreds of people have benefitted from the vast sources of information available, there has been an enormous increase in the rise of cyber-crimes, particularly targeted towards women. According to a 2019 report in the [4] Economics Times, India has witnessed a 457% rise in cybercrime in the five year span between 2011 and 2016. Most speculate that this is due to impact of social media such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter on our daily lives. While these definitely help in creating a sound social network, creation of user accounts in these sites usually needs just an email-id. A real life person can create multiple fake IDs and hence impostors can easily be made. Unlike the real world scenario where multiple rules and regulations are imposed to identify oneself in a unique manner (for example while issuing one’s passport or driver’s license), in the virtual world of social media, admission does not require any such checks. In this paper, we study the different accounts of Instagram, in particular and try to assess an account as fake or real using Machine Learning techniques namely Logistic Regression and Random Forest Algorithm.