A side from actually paying people to act as fans on social networks and entice their friends to do so as well, some marketers employ machines to inflate the number of their fans and followers online. Writing for PC World, Dan Tynan describes how he discovered the activities of a so-called Facebook bot network that operates a large number of zombie accounts created in Bangladesh. Tynan had noticed that many obscure companies were suddenly experiencing wild surges in “likes.” He cites Rent My Vacation Home, a rental agency based in Washington, DC, that went from two fans to almost 15,000 within a few days. Tynan counted about 70 other businesses and fan pages across the globe that were also flooded with suspicious “likes” from the same source. Tynan himself was able to create such a bot master with fake accounts in 10 minutes using minimal software and for under $70. Cheap software allows users to use proxies, trick Captcha programs that normally thwart bots, and add bogus friends and subscribers, Tynan writes. Why do some businesses resort to such measures? What might be the consequences of faking fans? How do you feel about companies and their brands pretending they have actual traffic on their sites?