About two weeks ago, I found some fake @spacehey profiles on social media again... On Twitter, Instagram and TikTok to be precise. Most of them are still online today. It's so frustrating trying to get them banned 😕
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First of all, I reported the fake Twitter profile I found, which claimed to be the "Official 24/7 SpaceHey Support" 😅
I reported it as "impersonation" in the Twitter App using my official @spacehey account - just a few hours later I got an email that it has been banned! Nice! 😊
Then, I went to the Instagram App and reported the fake profile I found there. Again, I used my official @spacehey account and selected "impersonation"...
Over a week later, the account was still online and I didn't receive a response from Instagram whatsoever... 😕
After a bit of searching the web, I found a "Trademark Report Form" from Instagram. I filled it out - providing a link to my trademark, a copy of my ID and a ton of other information. One day later, the fake account was banned! Success! 😃
Let's get to the fake account on TikTok...
You see, I never created an Account for SpaceHey on TikTok, so apparently someone else took the "@spacehey" username on there and created an account with my logo, which looks very official 😬
To report the account, I needed to create a TikTok account myself, so I created the Account "spacehey_com" and reported the fake "spacehey" account. Fast-forward one week, my report is still "open" and the account is still online. 😫
At this point, I look around the web again and find another Trademark report form, this time from TikTok. I filled it out, and they asked for even more information than Instagram did. I was really uncomfortable giving a full copy of ID and everything to them 😶
So what happened? Nothing. It's over one week later now since I filled out that last form, and I haven't heard from them since. The fake account on TikTok has over 60 followers now, my logo and the "spacehey" username which is all really bad...
A few days ago, I found another fake account on Instagram pretending to be SpaceHey. I reported it too, so let's see how this goes.
I guess there will always be new fake accounts in the future and it will always be a cat-and-mouse game to get them taken down... 😕
The bad thing is, I don't even know what they're up to. Are they phishing my users? Do they ask them for sensitive infos in their DMs? Who knows?!
Anyways, this can't really be prevented I guess - well, not unless Twitter/Instagram/TikTok decide to verify spacehey (no chance lol)
I don't really have any takeaway to share for all of this... I guess you should register a trademark, sometimes it may help when reporting fake accounts, sometimes it doesn't 🤷♂️
And props to @Twitter for being the fastest and most cooperative in this case!