FAIR - Fake Account Interaction Recognition (Perl)

FAIR is a Perl tool to detect potentially fake Instagram profiles based on interaction graphs and heuristic analysis.

Features

• Uses Apify API to scrape public Instagram data
• Builds directed interaction graphs (mentions, tags, comments)
• Computes suspiciousness metrics (entropy, temporal entropy, burstiness, engagement)
• Generates an interactive HTML graph using D3.js
• Supports recursive profile exploration
• Compares two profiles and highlights whether they are connected
• Uses an FBP-style execution component for the CLI entry flow

Requirements

• Perl 5.30+
• keys.env with one or more Apify API tokens (one per line or KEY=value format)

Install dependencies with your preferred CPAN workflow (for example cpanm --installdeps .).

Usage

Run analysis:

perl fair.pl --username example_user --depth 2 --posts 3

Run comparison between two profiles:

perl fair.pl --username example_user --compare-with another_user --depth 2 --posts 3

Options:

• --username: Instagram handle to analyze (required)
• --depth: Number of recursive levels to follow (default: 2)
• --posts: Number of posts to fetch per user (default: 3)
• --compare-with: Second Instagram handle to compare against the main profile
• --no-cache: Ignore cache.json and re-fetch data
• --suspicious-calc: Compute suspicious scores and highlight suspicious nodes

When --compare-with is used, FAIR explores both profiles, merges the two interaction graphs, prints a connection summary in the terminal, and writes a comparison graph such as graph_user_a_vs_user_b.html.

Demo

Generate a sample graph without API calls:

perl scripts/demo_graph.pl

Project Structure

.
├── lib/FAIR/
│   ├── API.pm
│   ├── Cache.pm
│   ├── Component/
│   │   ├── Graph/
│   │   │   ├── Connection.pm
│   │   │   ├── Merge.pm
│   │   │   └── Score.pm
│   │   ├── Profile/
│   │   │   ├── Build.pm
│   │   │   └── Report.pm
│   │   └── Visualization/
│   │       └── Render.pm
│   ├── Network/
│   │   ├── Compare.pm
│   │   ├── Help.pm
│   │   ├── Profile.pm
│   │   └── Run.pm
│   ├── Graph.pm
│   ├── Metrics.pm
│   └── Visualization.pm
├── fair.pl
├── scripts/demo_graph.pl
├── cpanfile
└── README.md

FBP Entry Layer

The CLI entrypoint is routed through FAIR::Network::Run, which dispatches to network features such as FAIR::Network::Profile, FAIR::Network::Compare, and FAIR::Network::Help.

Those network packages orchestrate reusable components under FAIR::Component::*, such as graph merge, graph scoring, profile build, and HTML rendering. This is the current FBP split in the project:

• one package for one feature entrypoint
• one subroutine: new
• CLI-style message parsing with GetOptionsFromArray
• plain return values instead of direct exits

The existing FAIR::* modules remain the internal library layer used by that component.

Disclaimer

This tool is intended for educational and research purposes only. Use responsibly and in compliance with Instagram's terms of service.