Numlock News: September 1, 2022 • Albedo, Bubbles, Smuggle
www.numlock.com
By Walt Hickey Instagram A massive scheme took in cash in exchange to get verified accounts for people on Instagram. The hustle was clever, and exploited the service's granting of verified accounts to people in the music industry while simultaneously having no way to actually verify if someone is a legit musician. They'd stage photoshoots for a client and then create profiles on Apple Music and Spotify, loading fake songs up and paying to stream them. They'd publish paid content about the client hyping them up as an actual musician, they'd post music content and buy likes and comments, eventually bamboozling Google, and then lastly emphasize their (fake) musical chops in their bio. Then someone at Instagram would be like "yeah sure seems legit" and give them the shiny blue checkmark, after which the client could drop the charade. This service typically cost
Numlock News: September 1, 2022 • Albedo, Bubbles, Smuggle
Numlock News: September 1, 2022 • Albedo…
Numlock News: September 1, 2022 • Albedo, Bubbles, Smuggle
By Walt Hickey Instagram A massive scheme took in cash in exchange to get verified accounts for people on Instagram. The hustle was clever, and exploited the service's granting of verified accounts to people in the music industry while simultaneously having no way to actually verify if someone is a legit musician. They'd stage photoshoots for a client and then create profiles on Apple Music and Spotify, loading fake songs up and paying to stream them. They'd publish paid content about the client hyping them up as an actual musician, they'd post music content and buy likes and comments, eventually bamboozling Google, and then lastly emphasize their (fake) musical chops in their bio. Then someone at Instagram would be like "yeah sure seems legit" and give them the shiny blue checkmark, after which the client could drop the charade. This service typically cost