Fake App: "Who visits your Twitter profile?" Is NOT Real

Fact Check

  • by: Maarten Schenk
Fake App: "Who visits your Twitter profile?" Is NOT Real

Does the app "Who visits your Twitter profile?" really work? No, that's not true, it is just a scam designed to gain control over people's Twitter account so the app makers can later use it to send or retweet spam or even use it in a bot network for various purposes (sending scams, promoting fake news, phishing...). The app does not work because it would be technically impossible and a grave breach of all kinds of privacy laws if it did.

Users are lured to the site of the fake app with tweets sent from previously compromised accounts (we archived the site here):

twitterapp.jpg

Users are then prompted to give the app permission to use their account, including the ability for the app to send out tweets on their behalf or change their profile:

permissions.jpg

That's a big, red flag right there. If you see an app asking these permissions you should really wonder why it needs this.

Users are complaining left and right the app is used for spamming people:

Fortunately one user already explained how you can get rid of it:

As you can see in this live running search, the fake app sends out fairly well randomized tweets to promote the app, heavily spamming people's timelines:

Want to inform others about the accuracy of this story?

See who is sharing it (it might even be your friends...) and leave the link in the comments.:


  Maarten Schenk

Lead Stories co-founder Maarten Schenk is our resident expert on fake news and hoax websites. He likes to go beyond just debunking trending fake news stories and is endlessly fascinated by the dazzling variety of psychological and technical tricks used by the people and networks who intentionally spread made-up things on the internet.  He can often be found at conferences and events about fake news, disinformation and fact checking when he is not in his office in Belgium monitoring and tracking the latest fake article to go viral.

Read more about or contact Maarten Schenk

About Us

International Fact-Checking Organization Meta Third-Party Fact Checker

Lead Stories is a fact checking website that is always looking for the latest false, misleading, deceptive or inaccurate stories, videos or images going viral on the internet.
Spotted something? Let us know!.

Lead Stories is a:


@leadstories

Subscribe to our newsletter

* indicates required

Please select all the ways you would like to hear from Lead Stories LLC:

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. For information about our privacy practices, please visit our website.

We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By clicking below to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy practices here.

Most Read

Most Recent

Share your opinion