Counterfeit Fashion Accounts Are Taking Over On Instagram

Originally created as a photo editing social media app, Instagram now holds the most counterfeit fashion accounts. Instagram is one of the most used social media platforms in the world. More than 1 billion people are active on Instagram in only one month. Instagram is used for multiple reasons beyond connecting with friends. It is also used for marketing and advertising. Many companies have accounts that post images and videos to promote their consumer products and increase sales. With 71% of U.S. businesses using Instagram as a marketing platform, how can consumers not turn to it to find products. 

With the booming sales leads that brands get from social media many counterfeiters have turned to Instagram for promoting fake products. These counterfeiters create accounts promoting themselves as third party companies that sale “authentic” high-end products for cheap prices. These prices will be significantly lower than the real product. This decrease in price leads instagram users to believe they are getting a bargain deal. These accounts will upload pictures of the products with price details and links to websites where they can purchase items. Often times these accounts take advantage of the stories feature that Instagram offers because they can post up videos and photos of counterfeit products only last for 24 hours leaving no trail to get them in any kind of trouble. 

Since purchases can not be made directly through Instagram these accounts utilize payment companies like Paypal, Venmo, and WeChat. Vox posted an article about this entire issue and in their article they mention that there is word that Instagram has intentions to incorporate a feature called “checkout with instagram”. This feature allows users to purchase items directly from an account. This might end up making it even easier for counterfeiting accounts to increase their sales. Instagram is not ignoring this and they have been taking action. 

Instagram allows its users to report accounts that appear as fraud or questionable. If an account has any actions that are spam-like the Instagram team will investigate and remove the account on their own without a report even needing to be made. The amount of counterfeiters out there is just too high to be able to catch them all. It is important for people to work together and take the extra click to report those accounts that appear suspicious.