This fake TikTok service promises free followers but gives you free malware instead

TikTok is undeniably one of the hottest social platforms, with users getting very famous overnight. So it makes sense that if you’re a TikToker with low followers and big dreams, you’ll probably want to try anything to get to the top as quickly as possible.

But at what cost?

A new TikTok service has sprung up recently offering to provide people with tens of thousands of followers for free. That’s right, for free. 

And you know when something is too good to be true, it’s probably just true and definitely not a trick to get you to install nasty stuff on your computer.

Of course, that’s exactly what’s going on here.

When you click on that “Generate Now” button, the site does a little parlor trick where it pretends to connect, and fail, and finally connect to your TikTok account. I don’t even have TikTok, but it found my non-existing account. Then, right before it works – so close, dammit! – it tells you that you need to verify your account with a few out-of-the-box methods:

So, your three options:

• Install a trustworthy Chrome extension to watch pirated movies and TV shows
• Get a free gift Primark Gift Card
• Get a free Argos gift card

If you click on the first option, you get this totally-legit site:

And the second and third options present you with this site for Shop on Top:

It really doesn’t matter what option you click on, because they’re all hosted by shopontop[.]xyz.

If you choose to download the Chrome extension, you’ll see this page:

It’s for an extension that alters your search results to show you some shopping options on top.

When we run the URL through some online scanning tools shows that they’re as bad as we’d expect. This is what we get for the fake TikTok site on URLScan.io:

So what did we learn today?

Don’t try to buy fake followers on TikTok or anywhere else, especially if it’s free. If it’s too good to be true, especially online, it usually is.