Intelligent Fake Profile Detection for Instagram Using Machine Learning

Abstract

The project entails the development of a Python-based system for detecting fake Instagram profiles using machine learning models and image processing techniques. The script employs libraries such as TensorFlow, Keras, Scikit-Learn, Pandas, Matplotlib, Seaborn, and OpenCV, facilitating extensive data handling, statistical analysis, visualization, and machine learning model training. The process begins by importing relevant libraries and datasets, followed by preliminary data exploration and visualization to understand the features and distributions within the data. The training dataset is preprocessed and scaled before being fed into a neural network model structured with multiple dense layers and dropout for regularization, optimized using Adam optimizer for categorical cross-entropy loss. The model's performance is evaluated using metrics like accuracy and loss progression during training/validation phases. Further, the script incorporates image processing techniques to analyze profile pictures using Haar Cascade classifiers for face detection, which contributes to determining the authenticity of profiles. Additionally, OCR (Optical Character Recognition) via Easy OCR is applied to extract textual data from images, providing a comprehensive understanding of profile components such as username, posts, followers, and other descriptive elements. Overall, this project integrates multiple computational techniques to create an automated tool that aids in identifying and analyzing fake profiles on Instagram, showcasing the practical application of AI and machine learning in social media management.

Keywords- Instagram, Fake Profile Detection, Python, Machine Learning, TensorFlow, Keras, Neural Networks, Data Visualization, Image Processing, OpenCV, Haar Cascade, OCR, EasyOCR, Pandas, Matplotlib, Seaborn, Scikit-Learn, Statistical Analysis, Data Preprocessing, Model Evaluation, Text Extraction, Profile Analysis.