How to spot a fake X account: a 9-point checklist

Impersonators optimize for a glance: right photo, right name, wrong account. These are the nine checks that expose them, the same signals Xmposter scores automatically.

The handle

• Typosquats: a swapped vowel, a digit standing in for a letter (leve1sio), added or moved underscores, or a preserved prefix with a garbled tail (jamesmelvi… + junk). Read it character by character.
• Bulk-registration patterns: a couple of letters followed by a long digit string (like EE435681031276) is the default handle X assigns at signup, scam farms never bother changing it.

The name and bio

• Homoglyphs:a Cyrillic “А” or Greek “ο” is pixel-identical to the Latin letter in most fonts. If the name looks right but search can't find the account, that's often why.
• Copied bios:impersonators paste the real bio verbatim, often including the real person's email and affiliate mentions, then sometimes append bait (“DM for signals”).

The images

Same profile photo and same header/banner image is the strongest tell, nobody shares your banner by coincidence. Re-uploads survive compression, which is why Xmposter compares images with perceptual hashing rather than URLs.

The account history

• Age: the real person joined years ago; clones are weeks old. The join date is on every profile.
• Followers: single-digit followers while following thousands is the signature of an account built to slide into DMs, not to be found.
• Content:no original posts, only replies under the real person's threads or generic reposts to look alive.
• Verification: a paid checkmark proves a card, not an identity, but a complete absence of history proves a lot.

One match can be coincidence (namesakes exist). Three or more together (photo + fresh account + lookalike handle) is impersonation until proven otherwise. If it's your identity being copied, here's the playbook.