My Instagram Got Hacked
Yes you read that right. My Instagram account has been hacked.
My tiny account with 375 followers (at the time) was hacked on May 20 2022.
So… what happened and what am I doing to get my account back?
What Happened?
I woke up in the morning and, like most people, the first thing I did was pick up my phone and checked the notifications from the night. One was an Instagram message from another local photographer I'd met during a photo walk. Now, in hindsight the message was a red flag and I should have deleted it, blocked him, and checked my account right away. Unfortunately, I'm a the kind of guy who will help people - specially people I know - whenever I can.
(At the time of writing this, I still don't have access to my account so I can't share the message I received. I will update if and when I can)
So the message I got was one of those "I need help resetting a password to one of my accounts. Can I get your number so Instagram can send you a code? Then I need you to screenshot and send me the code."
Now you're probably reading this and are like " Dude. RED Flag. Can't believe you fell for that. Should have known better."
And again in hindsight "Red Flag" but I just woke up and I fell for it.
The worst part is if I had checked my email instead of my Instagram first, I would have seen the emails from Instagram: "email removed" "new login" "password changed". Well, what's done is done. There's no undo button in life. PIC HERE
What I'm doing?
So what am I doing to recover my account? Well, I'm going through the Instagram process and oh boy is it annoying. First off, I'm a photography account. Mostly nature and wildlife and the occasional city shot. The primary way Instagram recovers your account these days is using a form of Face Recognition. I DON'T HAVE ANY PHOTOS OF MYSELF! So everytime I submit a request it comes back with "Thank you, but we could not confirm your ID. Please try again or find more options in the Help Center"
Instagram does have an option "no I don't have pictures of myself on my account". I've been proceeding with this option every day for almost a week now. I have only received one reply from Instagram support and I have yet to receive a reply back to my message.
What Now?
Well, I don't know... Two weeks of this and I finally decided to make a new account @funguy_photos I only made it on June 5 so it currently only has a test post and one photo of me this time.
June 6th Update
As I'm making the new account and adding the two factor authentication linking it to my Facebook, I realized I have a Facebook business account. Now back in 2019 Instagram didn't have a "creator profile," just personal and business. The business is what gave you the insights feature but to switch to a business account you needed a to link your Instagram to a Facebook page, so I did, then waited a month and then unpublished the Facebook page.
Fast forward to today: I found that old Facebook page and my Instagram is still linked to it! The first thing it asked me to do was to re-login to publish new content and to check messages, but what I can also do is check comments on my post and reply to them! I know WTF?!
… Now What?
After many YouTube videos I found the other way people have recovered their hacked or disabled accounts is by contacting Facebook's live support. Unfortunately, it seems like the only way to contact them or to even get this option is to run/have run as ad on their platform.
So it looks like I'll be running a few ads.