Exploration of the Dynamics of Buy and Sale of Social Media Accounts

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the economic scale, fraudulent activities, and platform vulnerabilities related to the buying and selling of social media accounts across major platforms, highlighting risks and proposing detection strategies.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of social media account trading markets, revealing their scale, associated fraud, and platform weaknesses, along with actionable detection recommendations.

Findings

Market value exceeds $64 million with median account price of $157.

Marketplace activities facilitate bot farming and fraudulent engagement.

Platforms show weaknesses in detecting and mitigating fraudulent accounts.

Abstract

There has been a rise in online platforms facilitating the buying and selling of social media accounts. While the trade of social media profiles is not inherently illegal, social media platforms view such transactions as violations of their policies. They often take action against accounts involved in the misuse of platforms for financial gain. This research conducts a comprehensive analysis of marketplaces that enable the buying and selling of social media accounts. We investigate the economic scale of account trading across five major platforms: X, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube. From February to June 2024, we identified 38,253 accounts advertising account sales across 11 online marketplaces, covering 211 distinct categories. The total value of marketed social media accounts exceeded \$64 million, with a median price of \$157 per account. Additionally, we analyzed the profiles of 11,457 visible advertised accounts, collecting their metadata and over 200,000 profile posts. By examining their engagement patterns and account creation methods, we evaluated the fraudulent activities commonly associated with these sold accounts. Our research reveals these marketplaces foster fraudulent activities such as bot farming, harvesting accounts for future fraud, and fraudulent engagement. Such practices pose significant risks to social media users, who are often targeted by fraudulent accounts resembling legitimate profiles and employing social engineering tactics. We highlight social media platform weaknesses in the ability to detect and mitigate such fraudulent accounts, thereby endangering users. Alongside this, we conducted thorough disclosures with the respective platforms and proposed actionable recommendations, including indicators to identify and track these accounts. These measures aim to enhance proactive detection and safeguard users from potential threats.