Good day.
In my time when surfing behance I've encountered a huge problem.
And by that I mean users who use A LOT (probably 2000-3000) of fake profiles to promote their services. I've done some security research and found out at least five of them (and three more who are surely affiliated with them) who currently have really big fake numbers on Behance.
According to this page https://www.behance.net/misc/community this kind of behavior isnt allowed on behance and should be strongly discoraged by the community.
So I want to report these people, but want to do it in a group because they use similar approach to cheating at promotion.
Please forward my email to anyone who can help with this issue, this is ridicolous. Thank you very much.
Now I would like to go to the point. There will be a lot of information about this situation.
At first I want to provide the profiles im talking about, let's start with the first five of them.
https://www.behance.net/DexWalberg
https://www.behance.net/PeterCulkin
https://www.behance.net/JNozoe
https://www.behance.net/AlexSeymour
https://www.behance.net/ScottNatyan
As we can see all these people have almost no information about them in their profiles: no websites, facebook accounts or twitter, only different emails.
All of them were registred in 2017, never had group projects and so on.
Also, EVERY one of them has around 1200 followers, and if you check out these followers, you will find a lot of empty profiles that follow all those five accunts.
But what is much more important, EVERY one of them has at least one project (others have even two or three) that were published EXACTLY on October 29, 2017 and have almost similar names.
Almost EVERY one of them has around 3000 appreciations (can be a little less, or a little more but the numbers are pretty close).
Even that is kind of too much of a coincidence. But let's look further.
Almost EVERY project consists of only FIVE pictures.
There is no any kind of presentation, example usage or something like that.
Only FIVE pictures with a simple mark (you can see a lot of them on Behance these days, but none of them are getting 2000 likes in a day) with a mock-up usage in the end.
Even more: the manner of presentation (three - six empty pictures, one mock-up picture in the end) is completley similar.
Look at these projects:
https://www.behance.net/gallery/58269337/Q-logo
https://www.behance.net/gallery/58267887/Rose-Curch-logo-design
https://www.behance.net/gallery/58268213/Honey-Yun-logo
https://www.behance.net/gallery/58268229/WVS-logo-design
https://www.behance.net/gallery/58267579/Agate-Jula-logo-design
https://www.behance.net/gallery/57577579/Drink-Bar-logo-design
And if you check out the profiles I provided earlier you will find even more of these.
All of them have a "logo-design", written exactly like this, with an "-".
It is almost impossible to believe, that FIVE people from different countries, with no apparent connection, post SIMILAR projects on one day, October 29, 2017.
Also, please check out these two works:
https://www.behance.net/gallery/52033857/Specialty-Coffee-branding
https://www.behance.net/gallery/58268715/Logo-set-2
As you can see they both contain the same logotype.
But there is even MORE.
If you go to the project appreciations graph, you will find out, that they all got 2000 appreciations in ONE DAY.
In the next days they got no more than 100. But then they got 2000 on the same day AGAIN.
And, as you've already figured out, these days are almost the same for all FIVE of them.
So, around 2000 fake accounts log in on the same day, let's say October 29, 2017, "appreciate" the projects of these people and then log out.
If it isn't suspicions behavior I don't know what is.To make a conclusion, I personally think, that all five accounts are managed by the same person, or a group of people. Their behavior patterns are close enough. It is possible that some of them are real people, but then they obviosly use some boost feature or some kind of boost service to get such results. I really hope that you check it on your side and delete these people from Behance. We build a community of creative people, and people like these are just destroying experience for many others.
However, that's not the end. Lets move on to the next three people. Their profiles:
https://www.behance.net/GibsonStudio
https://www.behance.net/Olandd
https://www.behance.net/MartinServantes
They have a lot of curios similarieties with the previous five.
They look much more alive, I'm sure that all of them are real people. Their projects even contain more than 5 pictures. But a lot of other patterns are the same.
MartinServantes has the project https://www.behance.net/gallery/58269419/Logos-7, that was posted on October 29, 2017.
And he got 3000 appreciations, 2198 of them came on the first day.
So I'm sure that he is in some way affiliated with the previos group.
If you check his appretiation graph, you will find out that he got 2198 appretiations in one day, and then droped to 61. The same story all over again.
And then after a week he got 1548 again, and after that 22.
Since his account looks much more as a real person's, I suppose that Martin might be the owner of the previos five accounts. Even if not, he surely uses the fake accounts to boost appretiations very often.
Other two people have a similar situation seen on the appreciation graph, and these 3000 appreciations appear there all over again. But the date is little different, so their affiliation link is weaker.
They both posted on October 31, 2017. And both got 2000 appreciations on a first day, but then drop to 31, only to get 1300 on November 8, 2017.
As you can see ALL EIGHT people I've mentioned got around 1200 likes on November 8, and I'm sure that happened almost at the same time. They all had very small numbers (20-100) before and after those dates, so this boost is surely artificial.
It is hard to tell what they did exactly, just used fakes or some kind of vulnerability in the API, but in any case, all of them and all suspicious accounts that appreciated all of them at November 8 should be looked into and banned or deleted if the suspicions are confirmed.
I hope somebody still cares about future of Behance and will at least ban obvious users of fakes.
Please forward this information to somebody who can do something, free Behance from this. We just want to have a healthy creative community.
Thank you very much.