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HOW TO STOP CATFISHING IN 2025 - #45
What’s been annoying you this week?
22% of Adults have experienced Catfishing online.
49.6% of the Internet is made up of Bot Accounts.
58.5% of Celebrities have been indirectly involved in Fake Account Fraud.
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Check Out The Social Impostor
In this conversation, Kevin Long discusses the alarming rise of social media scams, particularly those targeting vulnerable individuals and celebrities.
He emphasizes the role of AI in facilitating these scams and the psychological manipulation employed by scammers.
Long also highlights the importance of personal responsibility and awareness when navigating online interactions, especially for high-profile individuals who are often targeted.
The discussion concludes with practical advice on how to protect oneself from falling victim to these scams.
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Peace.
01) So tell me, who's Kevin Long?
Kevin Long (00:05) Well, Kevin Long is a serial entrepreneur who has been founded a number of online companies over the years and currently serves as the CEO of Social Impostor, which is a company that finds or removes fake social media accounts for high profile individuals. And also I'm a board member for a company called Blockticity. which is a Web 3 company that helps combat counterfeit goods and shipments.
ASG (00:38) What's annoying you this week, Kevin?
Kevin Long (00:41) Well this week I had to take a flight rather long flight and I have because of where I live I have very high frequent flier status with an unnamed airline and normally I get upgrades without any problem but this week I had to fly and not have my upgrade and I'm a big guy I'm six foot seven and or six foot six and six foot seven with shoes on and Having to cram my knees into a seat in the back of the plane was not comfortable for a long flight. So that annoyed me this week. But it's pretty hard to be annoyed where I live.
ASG (01:20) Yeah, I can't imagine there's too many problems in Hawaii that would annoy you but the being crammed on a plane is a fucking huge pet peeve of mine because I don't really travel much to be honest but I'm like you I'm big and I've got long legs so in those little confined spaces I'm like my feet pretty much can't touch the ground it's like my knees are stuck against the food table in front of me and any time it moves it's complete agony. So we've got
Kevin Long (01:52) Yep, God forbid anybody in front of you lean their seat back, right?
ASG (01:56) my god. We're having very... This is gonna... All the Short Kings listening to this is gonna hate our problems this week but we're gonna have to just... Just gonna have to take the tall privilege as it does here to Kevin so we can't go too deep onto it.
Kevin Long (02:13) Okay.
ASG (02:15) So let's talk about what you do. So social imposter, as you mentioned, is a service that removes and identifies the fake and bought accounts, which everybody who's on social media knows we are badly, badly plagued with them at the moment. And first question I need to ask you, which is the first question that came to my mind when I saw your bio was why has it risen so much in the last five years?
Kevin Long (02:47) I think it's, you the evolution of social media is becoming more more prominent. We've got more generations of family members that are connected to each other through the ever, the vast network of social media companies that are out there. There's, there's new ones that keep coming up. And anytime there's a lot of people involved in something, bad guys see an opportunity to take advantage of the situation for those who are maybe not as well versed in the use of that and what can be garnered from the information and data that those companies have. So it's kind of like a new take on the old 90s scam, email scam, where you would get an email from somebody saying, you've got all this money that I've been charged with the... dispensing it to you, you just need to send us your bank account and this and a lot of people fell for that scam in the 90s and this is just the, this is the new, the new email scam because it's where everyone is. The bad guys are gonna flock to where the good guys are and they're gonna try and take advantage of them like they always have and you know, grandparents and older folks are now. pretty well-versed in some of the social media companies, so they're the people that usually get preyed on the most. And or people who are high profile celebrities. government officials, CEOs of companies, those are people that are right targets for this type of fraud and this type of activity. I also think that the rise in AI technology has allowed people to create bots a lot more easily than if they had to have a computer science degree to do. And so people are coming up, there's a lot of bad guys out there that can think of a lot of ways to try and... to try and take advantage of people. And so they have built these bots that will grab usernames as soon as they're available, or they'll exploit some link that they've sent, or they've posted on a page that gets into your feed, and you click on the link, and then they have you. It's a very tough environment, and one that everyone should be cautious when they're using their social media account. You don't really have your guard up when you're on those places, but... It's beyond just everyone. It's a permanent record of what everyone can see. If you put something on there that could affect your career, your life, your security situation, it's now, you know, you also got to think about, this link may be tainted. And should I think about clicking? I, I certain that the person who posted this had good intentions or there's, there's no ill intent behind it or there's no potential for there being a problem. So it's really kind of. Increase the level of personal awareness that you need to have when you're online And it's put a lot of people Even I'll call not in a derogatory way, but normal Joe's are Experiencing this problem now. I must see two or three posts a day from friends of mine that said don't don't fall for the new account that's going to be me it's not and So it's it's a constant thing where they're mining These social media sites for information that would allow them to seem somewhat credible to potentially be you. And then they're going to create a new account and they're, you know, all those social media sites allow access to your friends list. So they're just contacting those people, trying to get, get them to follow you, the fake account instead. And they're then exploiting that relationship by trying to get you to give them information that could potentially be used, maybe not even on social media or maybe not right now. It's a long game. They're gathering information that they might be able to use with their next scam. these are not unsophisticated criminals in many cases. In some cases, they're nation states. some cases, they are organized crime. A lot of the activity is based in Africa and Eastern Europe and Russia. These folks that, you know, the cues that you can look for are how are the posts put together? they in good English? Are they proper English? I should say not good English. My English teacher would kill me for saying that. Are they proper English? they format their sentences like they normally do? If you're used to seeing posts by them, does it make sense that they would post something like this? So you really got to kind of be skeptical.
ASG (07:24) Hahaha.
Kevin Long (07:37) Which is unfortunate because that's not what social media was meant for. It's meant to be a carefree place where you can hang out, connect with your friends and provide updates on your life so your friends know what's going on. now you've got to, know, much like you're probably aware of your personal security when you go out and you walk down the street that you're not familiar with or go to a place you're not comfortable in. This is now becoming a place where you have to have your guard up. And it's unfortunate because it wasn't created to be that way. And a lot of people don't understand that there's a problem until it's too late. And that's really unfortunate when people get taken advantage of and potentially lose their life savings, not realizing that they're not providing something to a cause that they actually support.
ASG (08:26) Facebook's got a really bad one at the moment. mean Facebook's been notorious for people losing access to their accounts and no duplicate accounts being made by these fake services and as you said reaching out to their friends list and stuff but there's a really bad one in Ireland at the moment that I don't know if you've heard of but any funeral directors that post about a new death there's some kind of bot service in Ireland that's setting up
Kevin Long (08:55) off.
ASG (08:56) funeral page for that person and a donation link and it's pushing people to donate to it that know this person or family members is pushing them and then if they respond or open the link it's taking their details getting under their account and then email and messaging the whole friends list and making posts and it's become absurd I know like a lot of people that I know have had it happen to them and it's
Kevin Long (09:01) Okay.
ASG (09:25) almost like unthinkable how quick it is it's almost like as soon as the post goes up it scans it and then makes a page for that person who's died and it's just insane have you heard of this
Kevin Long (09:37) I haven't but it doesn't sound doesn't surprise me that's that's really low to take advantage of people in a time of grief and But you know, these are people that don't have Morals right they're already doing an immoral activity. So to take advantage of, they're gonna go where people are most vulnerable. And that is certainly a time when you're grieving, you're not really thinking straight. I wanna help the family or I contribute to the funeral costs or whatever their scam is. in that particular person, you're doing it with the best of intention. You're not thinking that something like that is gonna be a scam. The nice thing is, you're getting awareness of it out there and it's, you know, it's, It is incumbent. think there is some, there's some responsibility, at least for Facebook to police themselves. And that is a monumental task. I've got a couple of different feelings on that. One is Facebook is so huge. It's in almost every country in the world that will allow it. And many, many different languages. The ability of them to police everything everywhere is. a Herculean task that I don't envy. And especially when if you think about what they are, I mean, they're a for-profit company. Their goal is to make money as much money as they can. And just like every other network that's out there, it's all about profit and investors need to be satisfied. so For them, the more accounts they have, the more clicks they can sell, the more eyeballs they allege are on accounts. they're not, none of these companies are in business to take fake accounts or any accounts down. They want as many accounts as they can and their own protocols for what determines an account's ability to be removed are so difficult to understand and so hard to meet that criteria. that they make it really, really, really hard to get a fake account down. And one of the things that I've argued with them about with them has been their definitions of what imposter accounts are. And not just Facebook, this is all companies. If they have someone's name, but they don't use a profile photo or a banner photo of that person. they don't consider that to be an imposter account. No matter what it says in the bio, no matter what it does, what it posts, they can steal every legitimate post from your account and put it up there. But if they don't have your profile photo or banner photo, the companies don't consider that to be an imposter account, which is just absurd to me, but that's the way it is. And you know, it's their sandbox, you gotta play by their rules. So, you know. I think that there is an avenue for some sort of regulation from the government on some of these things. They'll hold these companies accountable, especially in situations where it's common sense would dictate that this is a problem. You need to address it quickly because it's impacting people's lives in significant ways. A lot of my clients are high profile and the damage to them is to their reputations when things happen. If it's an average Joe, again, not derogatory, but if it's an average Joe, it can be devastating if they, someone of their friends or family members falls for some link that's sent on an account that's not really theirs and they lose their life savings or they give up personal private information that they didn't want exposed. And now those people come back and blackmail them. mean, it's just, it's crazy. how these people have been able to take advantage of the system and the media companies kind of hid behind the regulations that are outdated. And I don't know me the lawmakers. used to work on Capitol Hill. It takes years to get something from concept to law. And by that time, as you know, in the technology world we're in now, in the social media world we're in now, months, you need something done in months, not years. And you can't really, it would be hard to regulate in the future because you don't know what's coming. So it's not an easy task anywhere along. There's got to be some happy medium somewhere that social media companies take more responsibility. The government regulates things a little bit better and not just government. That's the other thing is governments. got to deal with governments in every country that they're in. So, you know, it's not an easy task to be Facebook, but you know, just sitting in my armchair seat, seems like they could do more to help prevent this problem and tackle it once it is identified, whether there's a profile photo or not.
ASG (14:48) Yeah, your situation with working with high profile clients has got something parked up in my head a little bit because this is something I thought about a little while ago when I heard the radio legend Charlamagne Nagaud mentioned that it's so easy for celebrities now to be manipulated with the AI services and bot services now because they've put so much more of their life on the internet and it specifically I think of people who who are singers or have done lot of radio shows where they've got thousands of hours of their audio recordings online. it wouldn't be very hard for a service or a system to adapt the way they speak or the language they use to something that could end up ending their career. Is that something that you run into whenever you're dealing with people who you work with that...
Kevin Long (15:26) Okay.
ASG (15:48) there's maybe something being tainted or something fake being made on their behalf.
Kevin Long (15:54) There's I get that question asked quite a bit from my celebrity clients it's unfortunate that I don't have an ability to track those things or to find those things. really focus on the niche of a niche of, of fake accounts. And, you know, I've got a lot of people that asked me about websites that are problematic. They've set up a website in their name and they can't figure out what to deal with that. And I just, try and stay in my lane. I'd rather be really good at one thing than half-assed at everything else. So I kind of, I kind of stick to just. fake social media accounts for the most part and I'm pretty good at that.
ASG (16:38) Yeah I can understand that so what celebrities they're pretty that probably pretty easy for for one of these scammers to create fake accounts for them because it's not completely out of the world for a celebrity have separate accounts for separate things so like a celebrity may have like a music channel and a travel channel and a family channel just to show their entire life to people so are they Are these people running into that problem of people are making kind of off-branched accounts for them and people are believing, my god, that's my favorite celebrity, that's my favorite singer. I like, and they say they believe because it appears to be the person they idolize.
Kevin Long (17:26) Yeah, that's exactly how it goes. They'll create accounts with just a slightly different spelling or they may say private account or private chat or official account. I can assure you that none of these celebrities are sitting down and responding to their DMs. It's or they're not responding. They're not setting up a separate account to have a private account. If they did, they wouldn't tell you what it was. And The number of accounts I take down that have those words in it or outreach or fan account. That's another thing that has that that annoys me this week to fan accounts. They. Well, it annoys me not just this week. It annoys me all the time because the networks don't consider fan accounts to be fair game for impersonation. But if you go into these fan accounts, a lot of times these accounts will.
ASG (18:07) That annoys everybody.
Kevin Long (18:24) be posting as if they are that person or a manager for that person. And it's clearly an attempt to scam people, but because it has the word fan in the bio or the username or the app name, anywhere it says fan, the companies just, they won't take it down. It's sacrosanct to them to have fan accounts right now. And there's no purpose for fan accounts on social media. You get your news through TMZ or whatever, but you don't, you don't go out and, and, spend all this time on a fan page and professing your love or admiration for a specific group or individual and expect that there's anything good that can come out of that. And it is a huge fan accounts are a huge problem in addition to the ones that don't have profile photos. because they fool people into thinking that, it's really them. It's not just other people that are like me. I've really got this celebrity, this specific person, I've got their attention. And let's face it, we all want to be liked.
Kevin Long (19:33) They just have this this feeling, you know, I'm talking to so-and-so. Well, no, you're not You know, it's if you're talking to a real person at all because a lot of it is AI driven It's I guarantee you. It's not the celebrity that set up this 15th account That is now speaking to you directly and wants to have a relationship with you and wants you to come visit them and Send them money because their private jet is broken down or whatever the case is in that specific situation. But you know, I think they prey on people's mental or not mental, but their weaknesses and their desires to want to be important and to want to be somebody more than what their life is. And it's, know, everybody has situations in their life where they've got, you know, their keyboard warriors or their, you know, their They're tough guys behind the keyboard or they're soft or emotional behind the keyboard. But in real life, they're not that person. So they're living a fantasy and these scammers are tapping into that thought process and using it to the scammers advantage and to the disadvantage of the person who's being taken care of or being taken advantage of, not taken care of. And it's a real problem that a lot of people... They just, can't, you know, it's like an addiction almost where they can't stop once they've started. They don't realize that they're there anymore and that it's problematic and it's, it's potentially ruining their life. And it's, it's really sad that that happens and that people do that. And it's one of the reasons why I do what I do is because I don't like it when people are taken advantage of. And it is a, You know, it is one of our core missions in our company to stop this from happening to other people. It's not necessarily about everything about the client who's paying you. It's the millions of fans that they have that are getting taken advantage. And, you know, I look at it say, well, this could be my daughter, or this could be my parents who are falling for this. And I don't want that to happen to them. And I don't want that to happen to anyone else's parents or kids either.
ASG (21:54) I do want to come back at another point and talk about the celebrity aspect of it because there's a specific question in mind that I do want to ask you about it but I do want to switch a little bit slightly because I think anybody from around the UK or probably America too, the show was big enough but they whenever they hear people being taken advantage of online they'll think of the documentary Tinder Swindler. Do you know what this is?
Kevin Long (22:24) No, I've not heard of that.
ASG (22:26) So this is a guy that pretty much was on loads of dating apps pretending to be this like big business mogul, famous, rich person and he would like get into like real relationships with these girls and like to the point where it's like it could be you know if he sends a message saying will you marry me they're debating it and he would always say like stuff like I'm in this country for a business meeting and It would be the same story every time I got beat up by these guys and they're holding me at ransom or something's been stole from me and I need to pay to get it back. Can you send me this amount of money or can you buy me this? And these girls were running up crazy credit card debt. Like life destroying debt could not get rid of it. And it ended up being that this guy was sitting in one bed in my apartment and somewhere
Kevin Long (23:22) Thank you.
ASG (23:25) deep south of England had no money, had no job, this was what he done and they were completely taken advantage of but how is there a way that we can stop that happening because people get taken advantage of so much online and it's almost like you can see signs to see it could be fake but they're very small details they'd almost need to be like you with someone who
Kevin Long (23:50) All.
ASG (23:54) has a real depth of knowledge on the situation to see it. Is there a way that we can spot these things more clearly and stop getting to that point where we're really taking advantage of?
Kevin Long (24:04) Well, I'd like to say yes, there's some magic bullet to this, but we kind of talked a little bit about, or I talked a little bit about earlier where you've got to be hyper aware when you're online and interacting with people now. And it's unfortunate because that's not what these networks were built to do. But if you really don't want to get taken advantage of, you've got to be extra careful. You've got to almost, you gotta almost be a skeptic about everything that's up there unless you absolutely positively know for sure that you're dealing with the person. But the problem is you think you are and there's just enough of a, you know, it's like any good con. There's just enough of the truth or just enough of the, of the situation that seems like it's plausible that you fall for it. And then common sense just goes out the window and Do you really think that some guy who's a wealthy business guy has been, if you stopped and thought about it, would you really think if you hadn't been exchanging these messages with a guy like that, a business guy is, you're the only outlet for them to get help? mean, if it's somebody that's that mogul or someone that's that famous, they've got so many people in their inner circle that could take care of problems like that. You'd never hear about it. So you gotta think if you get to a situation where people are asking you for money, it's impacted charities as well, or ministries, or NGOs who are out there trying to raise money. Most of them won't use social media anymore because of the prevalence of the scams. But the people that are wanting to help the organization... are duped into thinking that it's really them and they're willing to give them money because they think they're helping out a cause they believe in. And so the psychology behind these scammers and the way that they manipulate people's minds is really fascinating and not in a good way, but it's fascinating to me that they've been able to perfect this craft to where some guy in an apartment in southern England can't convince as many people that he is. you know, this other ego, this other personality and do it so effectively that he's getting, you know, making a living off of it. Thank God they were able to finally able to track him down, I guess, because, you know, that takes one less person out of the mix that can cause problems for other people. And, you know, is there a, is there a way to stop it? I, you know, I hate to say it, but I, the scammers are always two steps ahead. So even if you stop something that's going on now, the next thing that comes along, you're not going to know it till it's there. And so, you know, it's unfortunately a reactive situation instead of being able to be proactive other than just being hyper vigilant about who you're interacting with on.
ASG (27:14) Yeah, it's just an unbelievable situation. It is really heartbreaking the fact that it can't fully be solved. I completely agree with what you said. There is no ballpark easy way to fix it and there's no easy way to really stop it happening either. You kind of have to take some form of common sense and read between the lines, but it's still very difficult. I now want to bounce back to the celebrity. aspect well this isn't really just celebrities because this happens to normal everyday people all the time which is catfishing I've heard some absolute horror stories like really bad ones but you working with celebrities must that must be just times a hundred for you because I would imagine you can correct me if I'm celebrities must be the main source for catfishes like they must be the main
Kevin Long (27:51).
ASG (28:13) profile is created by Kat Fushers. Am I right in saying that?
Kevin Long (28:18) I think so. And I think it's again, it goes back to the psychology of it. Are you really going to be that invested in some schmo that you've met online or that's in your distant friends list? But if you're a celebrity, you think you're interacting with a celebrity. Now you think you're important, right? They've messed with that part of your mind to make you think that you are exceedingly important. And you know, you, it's just so hard for me to believe that someone could fall for. you know, this famous actor or this musician or whatever is, has found you online, has never seen you in person and is getting into this intimate of a relationship with you. And you haven't thought once, wait a minute, why are we not doing a FaceTime? Why are we not seeing each other in person? And there's always going to be an excuse as to why they can't do it. But if you haven't asked and you don't stop and demand to have that happen, then. You know, it's one of those things where if people start contacting you, say, I want to do a FaceTime. I want to do that. I want to know that it's you. And that doesn't mean that they're not going to be able to, to generate some sort of AI driven, person that shows up on screen and responds to your questions. But it's, you know, for the, for the majority of these scammers that that's going to end it probably if you start demanding to see things before you are, willing to part with anything that's important to you. I'm just talking off the spitball in here with you off the top of my head as I'm going along and thinking of it. But in fact, I've gotten to the point where I don't even remember your question anymore. I'm sorry.
ASG (30:01) Don't worry. So I had a... Yeah, there being the...
Kevin Long (30:04) the celebrities, right? Yeah. It's, I think the celebrities are celebrities are definitely, bigger targets because people are going to be drawn to them. You know, they've got millions of followers. Usually they're in the news or they're in the tabloids. They're always, in people's minds. for the same reason that people report those things on TMZ and the other celebrity websites that you see out there is the same reason why. social media scammers are going for them because a lot of people, you know, they like their music, they like their acting careers, they like whatever their profession is, they're athletes. So they want to be their fans. So they, you they've already got the mentality of being a fan of that person in all likelihood. And they want to, you know, be more involved. They want to feel like they're more important than if they stopped and just thought about it, than they are in that person's... in that supposed relationship. And it's just disheartening to see so many people fall for it. And if you have someone you know that falls for something like that, it becomes even worse and just a crushing feeling to you that someone in your inner circle had happened to be victim to something like this.
ASG (31:25) Yeah I'm trying to kind of think in my head ways people could you know they could ask questions or ask for something to make it to make them understand that it is a real person on the other side but you mentioned obviously you know why if you were talking to someone online and getting serious with them in the dating aspect you would no ask for a facetime or things like that but the terrifying thing is with how AI is evolving now it's probably not difficult for these scammers
Kevin Long (31:46) Okay. Okay.
ASG (31:54) to use an AI service that would create a realistic looking person to talk back.
Kevin Long (32:01) I agree with you. I think if it hasn't happened regularly, it's coming. You know, instead of the evolution, I would call it the devolution of computer science was AI. Yeah, there's a lot of ways it can help, but I can think of a lot more ways that it hurts you.
ASG (32:21) So if we took the same face to face, because as you said, if it hasn't already been invented now, it's not going to be long until it is. What could people do or what could people ask these accounts that not only catfishing, but they're maybe asking to support a cause or to buy a product. Well, how could they find out if this is a real cause or a real person. What kind of questions could they ask or is there anything they could spot on the profile itself?
Kevin Long (32:53) Well, I definitely think that, if it's an NGO or a ministry or something of that nature, you can go and look at their real website and contact them directly and say, Hey, are you guys soliciting on online? Is this your campaign before they make a contribution? mean, that's some, some fairly simple, personal responsibility things before you donate. Now. The problem is you may be following their social media and you may be aware, just like the scammers, you may be aware of campaigns that they're doing to solve a problem or help a particular person in a situation. It's especially heartbreaking when you see it around natural disasters, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, fires, things like that, where people come in and they take advantage of everyone's kindness who is trying to help someone in need and they're not. In the US, we have a lot of times where people scam or there's scams out there claiming to be helping the victims of the Lahaina fire, for instance, and it just wasn't a real organization. Before I let my heartstrings take over, would definitely contact if it's a If it's a specific organization or group, look them up, Google them, try and find out if they're real. Or if it's somebody that you're familiar with, some organization or church or NGO that you're familiar with, call that organization directly and say, Hey, are you raising money online right now? Did you send me this direct message before you write the check or send them the credit card or give them the crypto? And it's a It really, unfortunately, again, this was not a space that was meant for you to have to play detective on your own, but it's become the reality of the situation that we're in in the 2020s. If you don't want to get taken, you've got to have a little bit of personal responsibility, a little bit of, or maybe a lot of skepticism when you're getting solicited for funds on these things. And, you know, it's, it's, It's incumbent on the person as well to have some degree of personal awareness and personal responsibility. But, you know, it's hard because you're not thinking that I need to have my guard up in a lot of these places. But that's where, that's the world we've come to now because of the lack of regulation and the lack of interest on the part of the media companies to deal with this problem seriously. It's, we've gotten to this point. I think, you know, think Elon Musk has done at least done a good job recognizing that a lot of the accounts on X are probably bots and, you know, significant, a significant percentage. And I would venture to say that almost every network has that same problem, whether they'll admit it or not. And they're struggling internally. Well, do I need to go out and get rid of these? Billions of accounts that are connected to bots are potentially fake. And look in the eyes of the shareholders that we don't have the user account that we've been telling them for years that we have, and we haven't really policed it. Because now I have to also go to my advertisers who are paying me based on my user numbers and tell them, it's really half that or a third of that are bot accounts. Those people are going to feel like they've been taken advantage of then and lied to. So it's a real conundrum for the social media companies to try and suss out these bots and what to do with them. Obviously you would think, the responsible thing to do is find them and remove them. But there's a lot of other things that are thrown in the mix there that probably has them thinking, what do we do? what's the right thing to do, what's the reality of situation, what can we identify and definitely determine or created by bots or accounts that are imposters or have ill intentions. You know, it's interesting to me that, for instance, on Instagram, one of the ways that you are able to try and get an imposter account down is you have to send a picture of yourself holding your license up in front of your face. Why can't they have a similar requirement to create accounts? If you're going to require that to remove a fake account, why can't you have one like that to generate a new account? And once you've got that ID in front of you and they've determined that it's real, then why don't they just automatically give you a verified status and not make you pay for it? That would go a long way towards stopping a lot of the stuff that's going on now. And it's not. It's not rocket science, but it's computer science. And we've got a lot of really smart people that working at these social media companies that can figure this stuff out. That part of identifying real accounts is not an insurmountable problem. What is an insurmountable problem is when the accounts are rarely used, when they don't have pictures on them. Why do you even allow accounts that don't have pictures on them? I mean, I'm sure there's a reason why I don't understand what it would be off the top of my head, but, you know, if I count, doesn't have a picture on it, why is it there? What's its function? What is it doing? What's the activities that it's performing? Those are all questions. If I were a social media company that I would be asking, and is it worth me having that account on there just to bump up my user number? If it's potentially causing problems to other people in the community. and the community being the network, your users, your customers, your client, but your customers, your client base. Those are all questions that if I were on the other side of aisle that I would be asking. So I'm certainly not a genius or those I've just been dealing with this for years. So things have popped up in my head over the years of why can't this just be resolved? And it just doesn't seem to be a priority for them. It's more about. What's the next thing we can do to make more money off of this than it is to let's stop and combat fraud? That seems to be a second or third tier activity for them. It's not front and center.
ASG (39:47) I don't think there's anything I have left to ask to be honest. think you've nailed a lot of these problems and I think anybody listening is going to at least know someone who's had these problems or maybe had them themselves or just seen it from a distance. So Kevin, this is your time now to plug whatever you've got going on. Where can people find you? What can people follow along with you doing?
Kevin Long (39:50) If. Yeah. So my website is socialimposter.com and that's imposter with an O R but it will work with an ER too. If you're going to the web address and you can find our website there. It explains what we do in great detail. Right now we probably are more geared towards the higher profile folks, business people, than we are to the individual, but that is hopefully going to change here soon. I'm working on a Web3 solution that would allow me to offer this service to a broader spectrum of people that are not in the high-end celebrity side. I'm trying to take advantage of AI in a positive way to create a system that would take us in a direction that would allow us to work with a lot more people and expand our operational capacity. hopefully soon we'll be available to be available to any of your listeners and not just the folks who may be in a position of a higher profile nature. So look forward to answering questions. I always will listen if somebody contacts me off the website. I'll always listen to them and see if there's a problem that I can resolve. And one of the things I have always been known for is I'm brutally honest and upfront. If I don't think I can resolve a problem, I'll tell you that. I don't want your money if I can't resolve the problem. If I can resolve it, I'll tell you I think I can resolve it. But I don't ever tell people I think I can if I can't, because I'd rather have a good reputation than a bad one. So that's about it for me. I appreciate the time. It's been great being on with you. And hopefully some of the things that we've said will resonate with people and it'll help them be a little more careful when they're out there perusing their social media feeds and dealing with people online. Get your guard up, be safe, and help protect the vulnerable. If you see something, say something. Identify a problem account, let the company know. Yeah, it probably will go into a dark hole and nothing will happen. But at least you've done what you can to identify the problem and help others from falling victim to it. With that,