Check if a social handle impersonates an official account. Detects look-alike character swaps (0↔O) right in your browser.
Free with no sign-up, and the check runs inside your browser, so what you enter never leaves your device. The result is a signal to help you decide, not proof for money or legal decisions.
Impostor accounts do not invent names. They change one character of the real handle. Lowercase l and capital I, o and 0 are nearly identical on screen. Enter the suspicious handle next to the official one and we diff them character by character.
In many fonts l, I and 1 — or o and 0, rn and m — render almost identically. Eyes miss it; character-level comparison does not. When the tool reports "differs only by look-alike swaps", that is an exact match for the standard impersonation trick.
To protect your own account or a creator you follow, use the watchlist mode: generate the likely impostor variants of one official handle in advance, and check incoming DMs against that list.
Unicode holds many characters that are distinct to a computer and all but identical on screen. Cyrillic а against Latin a, Greek ο against Latin o are the classics, and full-width forms and accented variants get used too. The codes differ, so the platform sees a different account; your eye sees the same name.
It works without swapping scripts at all. Zero against capital O, lowercase l against capital I against the digit 1, and r followed by n reading as m. Adding or removing a single underscore or full stop still works perfectly well.
This is one of the few areas where a tool is decisively better than a person. Eyes read letters as shapes; comparison happens code point by code point. Put two handles in side by side and the position where they diverge, and any mixing of writing systems, is reported outright.
Handles can differ without impersonation, and resemble each other without it either. Brands run regional and departmental accounts, so a character or two of difference arises naturally. Handle comparison is a starting point, not a conclusion.
Three things go with it. Creation date — an established brand's official account was not made last month. Posting history — impersonators have no past, or a handful of recent copies. And links from outside — whether the brand's own website points at that account is the most reliable of the three.
Verification badges carry less weight than they did, now that several platforms sell them with a subscription. Whether the account is linked from an official channel says more than whether a badge is present.
Accounts carry two names: the handle, which is fixed or awkward to change, and the display name, which can be anything at any time. Impersonation almost always works on the display name. It is easier and unconstrained.
The trouble is that our screens are built around display names. Notification lists, comments and DM lists show the display name and photo large, with the handle small or omitted. An account that simply typed the brand name into its display field is indistinguishable in a list.
Checking costs one tap. Open the profile and read the @ handle directly. Put that handle next to the official one here and the differing position appears immediately. However exact a display name is, the handle is unique in the world. That is this trick's only weakness.
The account sending the DM used the brand name verbatim as its display name, with the same profile photo as the official account. In the notification list the two were indistinguishable. Opening the profile showed digits appended to the official handle. Display names change without constraint and list views show them large, so this will keep working. Put the two handles side by side here and the differing position shows at once — verification is one tap.
The official account was @brandhelp while the suspect account was @brand_help. In a message list the two are effectively identical. Character-level comparison points at exactly where they diverge. Impostors do not invent new names; they move one character in the real one.
A handle substituted Cyrillic а (U+0430) for Latin a. On screen the two are indistinguishable, but the code points differ. The mixed script is reported explicitly. This is one of the few checks that is reliably better than the human eye, because the eye cannot win here.
Many brands run @brand_uk, @brand_support and similar alongside the main handle. Each differs from the reference by a character or two and produces an impostor-shaped result. This tool can only say "different", never "fake". Settle it with the account list linked from the brand’s own website.
A handle is unique per platform, so an exactly identical handle is the same account. Display names, however, can be copied by anyone — always judge by the @handle, never the display name.
It is plain character comparison, independent of any platform — works the same for Instagram, X, TikTok, YouTube and the rest. It sends no queries anywhere.
Use the platform's impersonation report, and tell the brand's official account if you can — reports from the brand move faster. Avoid calling it out publicly; the account you name may turn out to be a real regional one.