Instagram porn bots are using a bizarre new technique to peddle adult dating spam.
Rather than filling their accounts with sexually suggestive imagery, these bots are using literary quotes to attract users' attention.
According to Satnam Narang, Senior Research Engineer at cyber security firm Tenable, these accounts typically contain a maximum of three photographs.
The images themselves don't contain links or any suggestive commentary, ensuring they aren't detected by Instagram's moderators.
Instead they quote some text that appears to be truncated.
For example, porn bot account named "Pamela Turner" included a truncated quote from The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas:
Another porn bot account included a shorter, truncated quote from George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones novel.
Narang has dubbed these "Novel Accounts" - because they are both novel in their approach and use quotes from novels.
They are recognisable because their names contain two random emojis - one at the beginning and one at the end.
For example, one account names "Carolyn Jones" has the vulcan salute emoji followed by a smiling face with horns emoji.
Unlike many porn bot accounts, these Novel Accounts don't have any kind of tagline or short URL in the bio.
Rather than promoting their adult dating spam in public, they do so privately in direct messages.
Following one of these accounts and initiating a conversation leads to conversations in broken English, in which the user is encouraged a follow a link to view photos.
This often leads to an intermediary page, where the user is asked to fill out a "survey" about their sexual preferences.
The goal of the intermediary pages is to get male Instagram users to sign up for adult dating and webcam services - earning the owner of the account money through affiliate arrangements.
A single subscription can earn the account owner anywhere between $2 and $5, according to Narang.
"As long as Instagram has such a high volume of active users, it will continue to be a haven for porn bot scammers," he said.
"Just as advertisers flock to social networking services like Instagram looking to capitalise on all of the eyeballs affixed to their screens, one should expect scammers won't be far behind.
"However, the only thing constant is change, so we anticipate these tactics will deviate over time, as the cat-and-mouse game continues to be played."
