What To Do If My Instagram Account Gets Hacked ?
Do you have any reason to believe that your Instagram account has been compromised by hackers? Educate yourself on what to do in the event that your Instagram account is compromised. This should be especially concerning for a company that bases its marketing efforts on social media and derives traffic from Instagram as it is in this situation. If your Instagram account is not adequately protected, criminals can gain access to it in fewer than ten minutes if it is not password protected.
A hacker will typically accomplish this goal using one of the following three methods:
- Obtaining your login information and using it maliciously.
- Phishing, In a nutshell, hackers will trick you into clicking on a link in an email that takes you to a phony login page for Instagram.
- They will obtain your information if you click on the link and then log in using your username and password. Never click on a link in an email that has been sent to you.
When using third-party apps, you should always disable access to any third-party apps that look suspicious. Never give permission to an app to access your personal information if you are unsure of the developer’s motives.
It is imperative that you take prompt action if you believe that your Instagram account has been hacked and find yourself in the aforementioned situation. Here is what you should do if you believe that someone has hacked into your Instagram account.
Use Instagram Account Recovery
This is the page where you can submit a request for a login link to Instagram by using the button labeled “Forgot password.” After reaching that page, you will be prompted to enter either your phone number or email address before clicking the Send Login Link button.
After that, Instagram will contact you via email in order to assist you in regaining access to your account. It’s possible that hackers will be able to change your username and password so quickly that this solution won’t work. If it is determined that the username you provided is not valid, proceed to the next step.
Report the Account Hacking to Instagram
The next step is to report the breach directly to Instagram if you are unable to retrieve your password because the hacker changed it too frequently.
On their website, you will need to fill out a form with all of your account details, select the option My account was hacked, and then click the Request Support button.
In order to add an additional layer of protection, Instagram will ask you to verify your identity once you receive a response from them. This is how the procedure is carried out:
You will receive an email with a code from the website itself.
They will ask you to take a picture of yourself holding a piece of paper with the code on it. In most cases, they would prefer this to be a selfie from your perspective.
They will also ask you to show the initial phone number or email address that you used when you created the account.
In the end, Instagram will determine whether or not you are in fact the user of the account by comparing the photo in question to the photos you already have on Instagram.
Because there is essentially no way to break into the system that Instagram has in place, this is regarded as a foolproof method for the social media platform to retrieve your account.
Check Your Login Activity
This step can also be found in the settings of your Instagram account. When you check your login activity, you will be able to see each time your username and password combination was used by another person to log into your account.
Doing so can assist you in identifying potentially fraudulent attempts to log in to your account. When you check your login activity, the system will display the date and time associated with each login. It is possible that you may have difficulty recalling whether you or someone else did this.
On the other hand, if you suddenly find that you have followers that you did not accept or that photos have been posted that you are certain you did not take, then it is highly likely that someone has hacked into your account.