Inside the Fake Like Factories

(How thousands of Facebook, You Tube and Instagram pages benefited from purchased likes and how we reverse engineered facebooks user IDs) This talk investigates the business of fake likes and fake accounts: In a world, where the number of followers, likes, shares and views are worth money, the temptation and the will to cheat is high. With some luck, programming knowledge and persistence we obtained thousands of fanpages, You Tube and Instagram account, where likes have been bought from a Likes seller. We were also able to meet people working behind the scenes and we will prove, that Facebook is a big bubble, with a very high percentage of dead or at least zombie accounts. The talk presents the methodology, findings and outcomes from a team of scientists and investigative journalists, who delved into the parallel universe of Fake Like Factories.