What is a fake profile: understand how to protect your brand

Many companies overlook the impact that fake profiles have on their brand. Join Branddi and understand what a fake profile is and how to protect your brand from them!

Fake profiles have been gaining increasing attention from brands focused on the digital market. This is because, in addition to financial losses, fake profiles also affect the credibility and authority of the defrauded companies. With this in mind, Branddi has created this guide on what a fake profile is and how your brand can protect itself from this threat in a strategic and definitive way. Let’s go!

What is a fake profile?

Have you ever searched for your company’s name on search engines and social media and found a profile that doesn’t match your official brand pages? This situation is becoming increasingly common, and it’s not exclusive to your company.

In short, we call a fake profile social media pages that use elements of legitimate brands to promote fake offers and products. Fraudsters, using the image of established brands, manage to generate high profits with unrelated products or offers and services that will never be delivered to consumers.

To better understand the scope of this, we can refer to a research by Adyen with the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR). According to the survey, in 2023, frauds led to average losses of R$8.5 million per company in the e-commerce sector.

But have you ever stopped to think about why these profiles are growing? Learn more in the next topic!

The growth of fake profiles

According to the research mentioned earlier, the number of victims of online frauds increased by 70% compared to previous years. However, while the reasons behind the growth of fake profiles may seem obvious, they go far beyond the simple intention to generate dishonest profits.

This is due not only to the clear objective of these profiles exploiting brands' reputation, but also the ease with which they can be promoted in the digital space. Proof of this is that more than 250,000 domains are created on the internet every day, providing a vast space for fraudsters' fertile creativity.

It’s in this scenario that these individuals find gaps: with companies that can’t keep up with cyber threats in real time. As a result, they suffer not only financial losses but also loss of credibility.

How fake profiles threaten legitimate brands?

Now that we understand what a fake profile is and how this type of fraud finds room to grow in the market, we need to dive deeper into how they actually harm legitimate companies.

In addition to financial issues, as mentioned earlier, these fake accounts also threaten the reputation of brands. Once a consumer is deceived by a service promoted by a fake profile, for example, the legitimate company suffers with an increase in complaints, loss of consumers, and credibility.

But that’s not all: there are many more negative impacts caused by these fake accounts. Learn more about these damages in the following topics!

Damage to reputation

When we talk about damage to reputation, we’re also talking about brand dilution. After all, once the deceived public reports the fraud they’ve suffered, the legitimate company has to deal with negative reviews and all the consequences that come with them.

This involves legal processes, compensation, new communication strategies, and increased operational costs for teams such as legal and IT. In the midst of all this, the company is seen as a low-quality, fragile brand.

Loss of sales and diversion of organic traffic

In the financial realm, a fake profile can steal sales and harm the legitimate company by diverting organic traffic. In this case, paid campaigns and SEO strategies that managers fought to establish become ineffective.

As a result, the company has to deal not only with a drop in sales but also with expenses that do not yield results.

Difficulty in monitoring

To build credibility, fraudsters manage to blend in perfectly with the channels they use, incorporating elements of your brand’s intellectual property. They replicate logos, fonts, domains, and visual identity to make the offers and products look legitimate.

However, as mentioned earlier, more than 250,000 new websites are launched every day. This makes it costly, time-consuming, and difficult to monitor activities carried out in your company’s name, making it even more vulnerable to fraudsters.

Loss of narrative control

Losing control of your brand’s narrative is an aspect that may go unnoticed by companies that are not investing in digital protection. However, when threatened, this loss doesn’t just affect your sales, but even the authority of your brand.

For example, with negative reviews, much of your target audience is misled. As a result, new potential customers stop recognizing the excellence your brand has built and start to know it through the actions of fraudsters.

Security costs and legal proceedings

Finally, we can’t talk about the consequences of fake profiles without addressing the costs of legal proceedings.

It’s understandable that many companies opt for judicial actions when discovering fraudsters using their name. However, legal processes are not only time-consuming but also require investments that could have been better spent on preventing such cases.

To prevent this, however, it is necessary to know how to protect your brand against the actions of fraudsters. But is there a way to avoid the proliferation of these fake profiles?

How to protect your brand from fake profiles?

Brand protection, although challenging, is not impossible. That’s why Branddi has brought some practical tips for you to prevent and eliminate fake profiles that may be threatening your credibility. See more below!

Have a structured crisis plan

In the corporate world, any sign of a crisis is a true nightmare for managers and employees. Still, the big issue with these challenges is that, in most cases, they could have been avoided with preventive actions.

Digital crises, especially those caused by fraud, are just another case of problems that could have been eliminated with strategies and consistent planning.

Through this structure, it’s possible to establish an effective step-by-step plan on how to act during these situations. Remember: many companies, when caught off guard by frauds like fake profiles, act reactively, meaning they only respond after being attacked. The big difference in this case is to ensure a preventive approach by identifying threats before they become problems!

Educate your employees and customers

At this point, preventive action can also be key to preventing your customers from falling for scams. After all, with well-structured and consistent communication, companies can build a strong and difficult-to-replicate ally: their culture.

Thus, if your employees, partners, or consumers notice profiles that break these patterns, they’ll already suspect fraud, avoiding the spread of this content.

Rely on specialized support

Having a partner with expertise in the subject becomes essential for fraud prevention. After all, this work requires time, investment, and specific resources that not all companies have at their disposal.

That’s why, in these cases, the support of a partner like Branddi can be a key tool in creating personalized protection tailored to your brand’s needs.

In the case of fake profiles, we operate in three main areas:

• Active monitoring of social media profiles: We actively analyze these platforms, keeping an eye out for any suspicious behavior involving your intellectual property.
• Sending notifications and reports: We send friendly, extrajudicial warnings to registrars, servers, or platforms where these pages are hiding.
• Continuous follow-up: We monitor and analyze each case to ensure that it is concluded and the fake profile is taken down.

This is how we achieve impressive results, such as a 99% success rate in takedowns and an 80% reduction in complaints.

Don’t let frauds steal the credibility you’ve worked so hard to build: count on Branddi to protect every step of your brand in the digital world!