Research conducted in the United Kingdom has revealed that a large number of fake accounts were lying dormant on Twitter. The network included more than 350,000 accounts, although the study does not exclude that there can be even bigger networks.

The accounts were discovered accidentally as the researchers were initially analysing how Twitter is being used. Through a sample they were studying, they found these false accounts which can be used to increase the number of followers on particular accounts, send spam or boost interest in a particular topic.

These accounts, which are also called bots, can be run remotely by someone who can generate automated messages or control the activities they make. Some people even pay for these bots in order to increase their followers or to minimise a particular controversial subject.

Throughout their study, the researchers found that there were a lot of linked accounts. This suggested that it was possible that they were run by a person or a group of people. Although the accounts were not behaving in the same manner as bots, however they showed clear characteristics that they were not being run by humans. The particular characteristics included tweets that were being sent from places where no one lives; messages that were being posted only from Windows phones and tweets that included only quotes from Star Wars.

The people who conducted the study were very surprised to find these fake accounts because Twitter is already making a lot of effort to detect bots. While praising Twitter for its valuable work, the researchers explained that hackers have found other ways and means to escape from the social medium's official analysis. In fact, they explained that these accounts were not detected because they behave in a different way from bots which are usually identified by Twitter.

To increase the number of fake accounts that are detected, both Twitter and the researchers are now calling the public to report these bots through a website and a Twitter account so that the social medium can remove the spam and give a better experience to the users.