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Someone has stolen my Instagram account

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211–220 of 351 posts

Re: Someone has stolen my Instagram account

#211
post #13

Sadly companies like google, facebook only HN is the way to get resolution. Nobody cares about you. They look into it only when it affects PR.

> companies like Any company with large number of users. It is not specific to internet companies. If you complain to McDonald's, you don't really expect to a proper investigation of that wrong burger incident.

> If you complain to McDonald's, you don't really expect to a proper investigation of that wrong burger incident.

Apparently McDonald's franchisees take complaints from corporate very seriously, much to the dismay of their often teenaged employees.

Re: Someone has stolen my Instagram account

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pixelfed is the instagram-esque incarnation of the fediverse.

Which I'd assume will be filled with alt-right and similar content (banned from other platforms usually for good reason), anime avatars and a liberal dose of poor taste (and potentially illegal in certain jurisdictions) content such as "lolicon". None of this is something most people want to be anywhere near. While mainstream social media has many flaws, at least I am grateful for the fact that it bans, discourages o…

As long as you stay away from sites that are purposely for that audience like Gab, you will be fine.

Most Mastodon users feel the same way we do, and block users and instances that promote toxic content. Join an instance with similarly minded people and you will never see people be shitty in those specific ways because they're blocked from engaging entirely.

Re: Someone has stolen my Instagram account

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> companies like Any company with large number of users. It is not specific to internet companies. If you complain to McDonald's, you don't really expect to a proper investigation of that wrong burger incident.

> If you complain to McDonald's, you don't really expect to a proper investigation of that wrong burger incident. Apparently McDonald's franchisees take complaints from corporate very seriously, much to the dismay of their often teenaged employees.

Apparently, Google/Facebook contractors take complaints from Google/Facebook very seriously. What's your point?

Re: Someone has stolen my Instagram account

#214
Sounds an awful lot like the Twitter Blue Checkmark Hack a few months ago where a hacker got into a db and just reset all the accounts to his own/his friends email addresses

www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2020/7/15/21326372/twitter-hack-bitcoin-scam-new-tweets-shut-off-verified-accounts

Re: Someone has stolen my Instagram account

#215
post #4

Shocking behavior from the most immoral company on the Internet. What can be done about this?

> Shocking If you are so easier to shock, you will probably die from a heart attack at 30. But seriously, it is an action of one bad employee at worst, this story (if it is even true) can happen in any company. Facebook gets spotlighted simply because it is large.

No, they get spotlighted because when stuff like this happen, it's impossible to resolve or get in touch with a human. If it was resolved after contacting support it wouldn't have been a story.

Re: Someone has stolen my Instagram account

#216
post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Users here will believe any conspiracy theory so that's not really a high bar. I'm serious. There was that massive 2000 comment thread the other month about some big company doing something evil and then it turned out they didn't do it. Everyone who was right and informed in the original thread was greyed out by users here.

My anecdata says that HN users are among the least likely on social media to believe conspiracy theories. They actually tend to err on the side of skepticism. It's very common to see someone say, "Yes, this could be malice, but it could also be incompetence." I think this is partly because so many of us have worked in (or with) the targets of most conspiracy theories: government and large corporations.

I think HN users are convinced in their immunity to various things: propaganda, conspiracy theories, advertising. I also think HN users are very good at coming up with reasons for why this might be the case.

Re: Someone has stolen my Instagram account

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you complain to McDonald's, you don't really expect to a proper investigation of that wrong burger incident. Apparently McDonald's franchisees take complaints from corporate very seriously, much to the dismay of their often teenaged employees.

Apparently, Google/Facebook contractors take complaints from Google/Facebook very seriously. What's your point?

The claim that "wrong burger incident" won't be investigated by McDonald's is incorrect. McDonald's takes problems like that very seriously.

Re: Someone has stolen my Instagram account

#218
post #138
post #16

I think this is indicative of the biggest problem we have had with social media: there is no legalism here, just "codes of conduct" that companies and users both willfully ignore. If your handle gets sold by some facebook employee to a rich kid in LA, what recourse do you have? I don't know what laws this would break (maybe some broad definition of fraud? I Am Not A Lawyer) so it's not like this person has a slam dun…

If the new owner is imposter trying to be the old owner, it would be identity theft and fraud. If it's just giving the handle to someone else there is nothing. If you don't pay for a account, you don't usually own it unless there is something I'm missing. If you want to own your identity in the internet, get a website you own and don't rely on shady social-media networks that give you something free.

Platforms charging $1/year for a social media account seems like a reasonable solution to a number of problems.

Re: Someone has stolen my Instagram account

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is very little incentive to make their users happy when their users are not paying for the service This is plainly obviously wrong. When users are not happy, they leave the service, and advertizers stop paying. Even more, companies are much more afraid to lose users than to lose advertizers. Companies can live years without advertizers (by borrowing money for example or by burning reserves), but if a company…

Yes, in some way. But sole complaints are simply not hurting FB. How many of the people complaining would've used Instagram otherwise or even go as far as closing their account? I doubt the can even zoom in their Dashboard far enough to see the impact. The real problem here is that for a single account, you're far more dependent on Instagram than Instagram is on you.

> you're far more dependent on Instagram than Instagram is on you

Same way, if you have a Ford car, you depend on Ford much more than Ford on you.

> But sole complaints are simply not hurting FB.

Same as complaints on bad Ford service don't really hurt Ford.

Anyway, that has nothing to do with the fact that users of Facebook are not paying Facebook.

> There is very little incentive to make their users happy when their users are not paying for the service

This quote [typo] is very incorrect. I'm not going to argue that Facebook/Google support is good or bad, I'm just pointing out this statement is false.

Re: Someone has stolen my Instagram account

#220
post #7

There's no evidence to back the user's claims. This sounds like "Hey my dad works at Xbox and will ban you". There are other ways to compromise an Instagram account, like sim swapping ( https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/05/t-mobile-employee-made-u... )

The author's girlfriend had to re-follow the account, which implies the original followers were replaced with Danny's.

In the new Danny's screenshot, it shows that he's followed by three other "OG" account names: "blood", "murder", and "dead". Furthermore, the screenshot was taken from another account, otherwise it would have shown as "This account is private" (Try viewing your own Instagram profile while logged in and private). Whoever was viewing it was therefore friends with Danny, 'blood', 'dead', and 'murder'. In other words, someone interested in OG accounts, or one of new Danny's alternate accounts.

Finally, it would be truly bizarre if new Danny immediately implicated a friend at Facebook before anyone asked him how he got the account. If this was true, I would suspect new Danny would be going to great lengths to hide the fact, rather than trying to hand the excuse out before anyone even asks. This guy just stole someone's Instagram account. He's hardly a credible source.

I wouldn't rush to conclude that a Facebook employee did this. It sounds like the kind of excuse someone would give to pretend to be coming from a position of internal power rather than appearing to be the result of a hack.

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