Instagram account hacked

LegacyUser

Hello everyone, I am hoping someone can help me please. Firstly I must say that while I can use a computer and surf the net etc I would not consider myself 'tech savy' with social media like snapchat, instagram etc.

My problem is that my 13 year old daughter has an instagram account which she rarely uses and always shows me the content. Last night she discovered she had been logged out by someone and her password was changed. Some very inappropriate pictures were then put on her account which means it looks like it is her who is posting them. Straight away she wanted to delete her account so we clicked on the Forgot Password button but all we got back was a message saying to check a certain email address (not my daughter's or mine) and a link would be posted to reset the password. I did not follow the instructions as I was immediately suspicious so my next step was to report to instagram that the account had been hacked.

Now this is where I finally come to the real crux of the problem. When I reported it to instagram my daughter received an email saying that if she wanted instagram to help her then she would have to write down a certain number that they sent and hold the piece of paper in front of her and take a picture of herself and the number and send that back to Instagram.

As I said at the beginning I am not great with these social media things (i have never even been on facebook) but that request seemed ridiculous to me. I'm wondering if anyone else has been hacked and how did they solve it or is the request for a photo a legitimate way that instagram use to help those hacked.

I would really appreciate any advice from other board users. Thank you very much and apologies for the long winded post.

saraj14

That is not the way to reset a password. Do not send her photo.

LegacyUser

Thank you for the reply, I do appreciate you taking the time. Perhaps I did not make it clear in my long winded post so let me clarify. The request to send a photo did not come when we clicked the 'Forgot Password' section. It came when I reported that the account was hacked to Instagram on their Help Center page. The email states its from Instagram but I am so uncertain as to who is actually legitimate on the internet - its a lack of knowledge on my part even though I'm trying to learn as much as I can. Surely someone else has had this problem of being hacked?

LegacyUser

Thank you for your reply but let me clarify a little bit. The request for a photo did not come when I pressed the forgot password button, it came when I reported the account being hacked to instagram. This is my worry - is the instagram.com site the legitimate one? That's why I'm asking if anyone has been hacked and if they have been asked to send photos by instagram. On the other hand when I press the forgot password button a message comes saying to check a certain email address for a link to change password. I have now figured that this certain email address must belong to the person who did the hacking.

Penny Tration

http://uk.pcmag.com/web-sites-products/17809/news/facebook-instagram-ask-more-users-to-verify-accounts-with-ph


Yeah op, insta asks for photographic proof in cases where the email was also hacked.

LegacyUser

Penny Tration wrote: »

http://uk.pcmag.com/web-sites-products/17809/news/facebook-instagram-ask-more-users-to-verify-accounts-with-ph


Yeah op, insta asks for photographic proof in cases where the email was also hacked.

Thanks so much for your reply. I am still very cautious however about sending a picture of my 13 year old. I cant understand how instagram will verify her account using this picture as she has none attached to her profile.

Also how would I know if her email has also been hacked? It may seem like a stupid question but I'm very confused by the whole situation. When I sent the report of hacking to instagram they replied with the photo request to my daughter's email address so doesn't that mean it hasn't been hacked if she (or me) can still log in to her email? I really appreciate you taking the time to advise.

Sligo1

worriedmom wrote: »

Thanks so much for your reply. I am still very cautious however about sending a picture of my 13 year old. I cant understand how instagram will verify her account using this picture as she has none attached to her profile.

Also how would I know if her email has also been hacked? It may seem like a stupid question but I'm very confused by the whole situation. When I sent the report of hacking to instagram they replied with the photo request to my daughter's email address so doesn't that mean it hasn't been hacked if she (or me) can still log in to her email? I really appreciate you taking the time to advise.

Change the password on her email account aswell. "If" her email has been hacked the hackers may not have changed her password. Get her to use something really random as a password. So even if her email has been hacked they won't be able to access it again if they don't know her new password.

LegacyUser

Thank you Sligo1 for your reply. I have changed the email password and I have also given in to Instagram and sent a picture as requested although I was very hesitant to do so. I hope however that by bowing to their request that they will come back promptly with a solution where we can delete that account and move on. I have to say they dont make it easy for parents to help their children as they would not entertain my requests on her behalf from my own personal email address. While their policy is that 13 year olds are allowed to use their site they should understand that children of this age do not have the same common sense and maturity as parents so they should also allow parents to be involved - how else can we, as parents, guide and help our children through situations which arise through no fault of the child.

If anyone else has had a similar experience I would be delighted to hear from them. Thank you to all who replied to my query.

Aimeee

You can check if email is being redirected to an unknown address. I'd have to be looking at email now on laptop to tell you how to check that. Is it in settings/security or tools?? You probably have your own email as security address, if not you should have and it will alert you if email was signed in from a different device. (Though I suspect that can be overridden too at this stage. I'm not that au fait with all this myself). The above was a learning curve for myself!
I'm interested in how instagram was hacked though as I have a daughter myself and even though she doesn't post much she was liking a lot of stuff. Anyone can see if you have "hearted" a public account I think, so this can lead to friend requests from loads of random strangers.

LegacyUser

Hi Aimeee,

thanks for your reply. I'll search through settings/tools/security as you mentioned and see if I can figure out anything there. I now have my daughter's email address backed up by mine but unfortunately her instagram account was not (lack of knowledge on my behalf I admit). You ask how was the instagram account hacked - the simple answer is I dont know. My daughter just came straight to me to show me the inappropriate post that had been put up and that was the start of all this. While we cant gain access to her account we can see that the hacker is following over 4000 people at this stage and the number is growing all the time. Considering I have been able to change her email password which was associated with her instagram account then I'm hoping that it wasn't hacked.

My daughter also does not post very much on instagram and in regard to 'hearting' or liking things - her account was a private account so as far as I (and she) knows that means only those people who she grants permission to can see what she posts or likes.

As you have a daughter on instagram also who is perhaps similar in age to mine then I would very much like to swap info with you on here which may help both of us to learn a little bit more. I am still waiting for a reply from instagram since I sent the photo earlier today but I will post here as soon as I receive one.

Aimeee

I'd be interested to know how this works out for you. Hopefully instagram will sort it.
Regarding the liking of photos if your daughter likes a photo & that user is public then if anyone clicks of the '1000likes' tag a list of all those who liked will pop up and the option to follow them. So if she's been liking lots of photos her tag will have cropped up a lot. My daughter was doing this until i showed her what was happening. Now I have no idea how one would hack from just the name but it does mean that her name crops up in places you know nothing about as opposed to her few contacts.
This was news to my daughter.

Regards the hacking is there any chance that a friend got hold of your daughters device and made all the changes. This has happened to someone i know with her daughter. A new 'friend' thought it would be funny and started to post mean stuff (i didn't see it myself so not sure on details). I'm not sure now how they resolved it. But it was lesson learned on trusting new friends so quickly. I'm sure the new friend didn't entirely comprehend what trouble she would cause either.

Another thing that could have happened is if your daughter signed into instagram on anothers laptop and option to remember password was clicked then anyone who uses that laptop can sign into her account. Would she have done this at a friends house or at a library etc?
My daughter goes through phases of instagram and it's on a go slow since summer holidays started but it won't go away anytime soon!

LegacyUser

Aimeee, Thanks for the info on liking pictures and tagging. Its all such a minefield isn't it?

In relation to your suggestions about a friend making the changes or my daughter using a different computer I'm afraid that none of those would apply in this situation. Firstly the content that was posted was so adult in content that I cant see any of her friends being responsible. I have also just asked her if she has used anyone else's computer when she's away at friend's house but she assures me she hasn't. She actually always brings her own with her when going to friend's for an afternoon etc.

I have also just looked at her email account which is a yahoo mail one and I have seen the settings tab but there doesn't seem to be anything about redirection to another email address. I cant seem to find a 'tools' button to click but I'll keep browsing around.

Still no reply from Instagram since I sent the photo at lunchtime today. I'll keep checking and post their reply as soon as I receive it. Thanks a million, talk again soon

LegacyUser

Hi, Just to give you an update on the situation. I sent the photo and the code Monday to instagram. They replied by email saying the photo was too dark and also my daughter's user name should be on the page with the code. I wasn't happy about this but as I dont see any other way of solving this saga I took another photo and wrote the code and her username and sent it back again by email yesterday. This evening an email arrived saying that they needed her email address that was used to sign up to instagram. I sent that but then received another email to say it was not the correct email account and unless we could send the correct one then they can do nothing about the account. I asked my daughter if she was certain about the email address and she thought that was it. I have written back to instagram outlining my annoyance (poliltely) about all the requests and at the moment I'm waiting to hear from them again.

So no news really to tell you. I do hope to eventually get this sorted and will keep you posted.

Aimeee

What a palaver! So frustrating.
Can you recall the email you mentioned in your original post that was mentioned (not yours or your daughters). Maybe sending them that email and all the info would get them to delete the account and have done with it.
What a nuisance. I never understood with instagram why they just don't have a close account facility. What is their thinking behind that?
I really hope you get it sorted. Has there been anymore activity on the account since?

LegacyUser

Hi Aimee. That's a good point about the original email, I never thought of that. I have it actually written down but some of it is blocked by stars so its not a full email address. Still I will write to them again and give them what I have - maybe they can decipher the blocked out letters etc. Nothing else has been posted to the account as far as we can tell so hopefully it was a one off. I'm still waiting to hear from them since yesterday but I'll email them again now with your suggestion. Thanks a million.

LegacyUser

Hi, Another update though not much of an update to be honest. I did as you suggested Aimeee and emailed the partial address of the hacker but got no response. I'm beginning to think that the emails I did receive from instagram are automated. When they said my daughter's yahoo mail was not the one used when she registered the account, I sent them her gmail address. She has never used this address but we think it was necessary for her to have a gmail one in order to set up google when she got her phone. They then told me that wasnt the right one either so we thought maybe she used my address to register. We honestly cant remember so I sent them an email suggesting they try my own email addresses - one at yahoo.com and one at gmail.com. That was the day before yesterday and I'm still waiting for a reply. I'll keep you posted.

LegacyUser

Hi Aimeee, Finally I have a result about my daughter's account. All posts (both hers and the one from the hacker) have been deleted. I think instagram probably got fed up of me emailing them and filling out report forms constantly. I didn't get any notification however that the issue was being resolved - it was my daughter who received a message from a friend who was keeping an eye on the account activity. Anyway I'm delighted that its gone - it was a worry that something else unsavoury would be posted. It has been an eye opener for my daughter too and it proves to her that even though I'm a dinosaur (as she thinks) when it comes to social media, I am right in what I've constantly been telling her about the dangers of the internet. As with many young people of her age - she has more than likely been thinking that I'm a nag because I keep repeating the same old 'lecture' over and over.

Thank you for your interest and advice over the last few days - it was good to have someone to chat with. I hope you and your daughter can use the internet/social media without some idiot interfering and invading your privacy

Thank you also to the other people who helped by replying to my original post - it is much appreciated.

Sligo1

That's great there has been some resolution.

Aimeee

Hi worriedmom that's excellent news. I'm delighted that it's been dealt with.
Such a worry isn't it but as you say it's been a good lesson. I think it's the only way really they get the message. My own daughter had a good learning curve too though it was harmless enough in that herself and two other girls formed their own group and stared sharing their photos etc. A day later there were loads of followers whom my dd didn't know. What happened was that one of the girls in the group okayed loads of girls she knew/knew of. All of them unknown to my dd. She was distraught that these strangers (to her) were seeing & liking her photos. Totally harmless really but at the same time it opened her eyes a lot. Thankfully since the summer holidays started there's not been too much instagram activity. I hope it continues that way.
I'm so glad you got it sorted & thanks for letting me know.