“The trust of the innocent is the liar’s most useful tool.” – Stephen King
This post is about trust in the internet world and its potential dangers. Why am I writing this post today? To warn everyone about the dangers of getting scammed and to find potential remedies if this happens.
In short:
The Instagram account of a friend was hacked. The scammer now tries to scam his followers, pretending to be my friend. All contact info was changed asap by the scammer, and even though the posts are fraudulent - and reported to Meta support, they claim not to be able to resolve this situation.
How it all started
A friend had an Instagram account, which he barely used. He posted every few weeks/months .. and sometimes he would use it to check out some news & friend posts.
A kind request received by a friend
Yesterday he received a message on Instagram from a friend he trusted.
"Hey, I participate in a contest! Will you please vote for me??? All you need to do is send me a screenshot of a link that will be sent to you"
What would you do?
To me, this would be a red flag right from the start.
He was busy with something else and he thought, why not help my friend?
Everyone is guilty until proved otherwise
But he sent a screenshot of the one-time log in their account* And provided immediate access to the scammer (his friend's account was scammed too)
The scammer immediately changed all the contact info (telephone, email, and also the username) so that the owner could not find him or could not regain access to his account
Now what?
My friend tried to post on Facebook and to warn his friends. He also immediately changed his facebook password.
(Make sure you take all the precautions of securing your account - here)
He contacted me today .. and this is what we did.
Report
Make sure you report this account from other accounts / get your friends to do it.
Follow the official Instagram help links
https://help.instagram.com/149494825257596?helpref=faq_content
Depending on how soon you realize it, make sure you try to regain access to your account using all the above measures. Have ready your id card/driving license because you may have to send it to Instagram.
Contact Facebook/Meta Support
Try this link to contact them - describe the situation and see what they can do to help - however please note that this is support for Business Accounts.
In our case, even though I insisted, the only solution provided to me was that 'We will give it to the technical team to investigate'
And only to get back to me after a while to tell me
Unfortunately and despite all my efforts I was not able to get our internal teams to resolve this for you. As mentioned on the chat this type of situations really are out of our scope of action.
Sorry again for not being able to help you on this and appreciate your understanding. Hope you have a great day and don't hesitate to get back in touch if you need anything else
Last resort
I dont like to reach a dead end. There has to be a way to do this. There has to be a resolution.
Upon looking further what I suggest is ask your friend to report the stolen account as being an account impersonating him, Here's a link with instructions and even a form you can submit to Instagram Team directly
https://help.instagram.com/370054663112398
Now, I am waiting for my friend to do some extra steps and we ll see what happens. At the moment I think that at least the scammer has lost access to the account.
Still, this has taken so much of our time - and we are still unsure if it will be resolved.
Has something like this happened to you?
Do you have any tips to share?
This brings me to another question ..
Choosing a centralized platform for your content; should they at least not be in a position to protect you and their users from harm and fraud?
Some extra resources:
https://www.aura.com/learn/my-instagram-was-hacked-what-to-do
(you can follow the steps after the 3d minute)
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