Nothing is more agonizing than when a flabby hacker has taken over your Instagram. Because why?! Fortunately, parent company Meta also sees that and this week launched very fine tools to prevent and solve that misery. WANT editor Dennis Mons gives you a handy summary to prevent and fix such a hack.
Perhaps this has happened to you once but we hope not. Suddenly weird posts appear on your Instagram account or DMs are sent to friends that you didn’t write. In other words, you’ve been hacked. But what to do then?
Instagram and Meta help you get hacked
Instagram has introduced new recovery tools for hacked accounts since this week. So definitely don’t panic, because thanks to the company, your account can be restored pretty quickly. You have to hurry though since such a hack and associated posts go around like rapid fire in your group of friends.
Insta does have fine features like two-step verification and a security check to thwart a hack anyway. But what to do when it’s already too late? Passwords are relatively “easy” to figure out these days through things like brute force hacking or malware where software is deployed to collect login credentials. Or that your password happened to turn up in obscure places on the Internet.
Just an identity check. (Image: Instagram)
Recovering after a hack
It’s easy to imagine some panic if you’ve been hacked. Instagram and Meta hope to reduce that thanks to an account recovery center that improves security on the platform. It can be found on the site: Instagram.com/hacked.
If you no longer have access to your own account you have to knock on the door there and you will be given some steps to regain access to your own profile. You will provide the reason for account recovery and your details.
Just going through a few steps. (Image: Instagram)
Help from your Instagram friends
To determine if you are actually the owner of a particular Meta account, you can use several options. One of them is the help of your friends. Namely, you then ask them to verify that you are actually yourself (a rather philosophical question, come to think of it).
Once that is completed, you can reset your password. If your friends do not confirm, you will get another chance to have other friends confirm your identity.
Call in the help. (Image: Instagram)
In addition, it is possible to prove that you are Pete Puk by uploading proof of identity. This is also used for age checks and payments. Frankly, the idea that Instagram and thus Meta has our ID card in the system makes me a little queasy, but soit. That company often has everything it wants to know anyway.
Nice initiative by Instagram and Meta
The social media platform is not sitting on its bum otherwise. It also monitors suspicious activity itself and checks if there is a hack going on worldwide. It deletes accounts that are curious and suspicious. If those accounts don’t immediately set off bells and whistles, you will still get a warning when you get a personal message from dubious accounts.
Anyway, the advice from us is: enable all of Instagram’s security options to prevent a hack. But should you be the fall guy, there’s no reason to panic. It may take some time to get back into your account. Please send messages on other platforms not to click or respond to curious messages. Generally, this problem is then resolved relatively quickly.
By the way, Instagram has launched other cool features such as scheduling posts. You can read how to do that here.
