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Someone has stolen my Instagram account

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Re: Someone has stolen my Instagram account

#281

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

heavyset_go wrote: post #193
Nextgrid wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ethically vacuous doesn't mean stupid though, and I doubt they will jeopardize a lucrative career for a quick buck or bragging rights in front of their friends.

People do this all of the time, and there is nothing about jumping through Facebook interview hoops that prevents people from making immoral decisions for personal gain once they're an employee.

You might even argue that joining Facebook is an example of "making an immoral decision for personal gain", therefore any Facebook employee has track record at that.

Re: Someone has stolen my Instagram account

#282

Post by newdude116 »

simias wrote: post #277
newdude116 wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why the downvote?

Because it's unrelated to the topic at hand? If what you say is true then it's interesting but that's not really the place to discuss it.

We were talking about there is no "legalism" and accountability in this thread. (Kapura)

Re: Someone has stolen my Instagram account

#283

Post by BelleOfTheBall »

serjester wrote: post #49
ipsum2 wrote: 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... )

Agreed. Is anyone really going to risk their cushy FAANG job to give their buddy a cool handle? Possible, but seems far fetched.

I'm like 90% sure there was an article about Shopify employees stealing customer data just recently. Not FAANG, granted, but it's still a traditional way of data leaking or accounts being stolen. Inside jobs aren't exactly a rarity.

[0]: https://community.shopify.com/c/Shopify-Discussion/Incident-...

Yup, here it is, just five days ago.

Re: Someone has stolen my Instagram account

#284

Post by rodgerd »

simonw wrote: post #33
ipsum2 wrote: 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... )

It's believable though. The culture around "OG" accounts really is that weird. It's easy enough for a Facebook policy team to confirm this one way or the other by looking at the logs. If this gets enough visibility I assume that will happen.

It can be incredibly difficult to get that traction - I know Patrick Grey of Risky Business has mentioned in passing that he's occasionally helped local-to-him small businesses who have been locked out of their Instagram accounts, because it's basically impossible to get assistance except through well-connected folks.

Re: Someone has stolen my Instagram account

#285

Post by fotta »

tasuki wrote: post #259
some1else wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a screencap of Philip Kaplan's newsletter from 2017 where he claims a friend at Instagram helped him get @DistroKid, which was registered but inactive: https://i.imgur.com/9mNY7lJ.png

Similarly, I "took over" https://github.com/tasuki by simply messaging the customer support. They said it wasn't being used and I could have it.

The difference is that this is a documented GitHub policy [0]. I’ve done the same for a handle that didn’t have any activity in its entire history. AFAIK neither Instagram nor Twitter have similar policies (though I somewhat wish they did).

[0] https://docs.github.com/en/free-pro-team@latest/github/site-...

Re: Someone has stolen my Instagram account

#286

Post by heavyset_go »

lightgreen wrote: post #235
logifail wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it was ketchup instead of curry, or if they put 8 nuggets instead of 9, I very much doubt so Sorry, but I've ordered a specific burger at McD's dozens of times: very occasionally they mess up the order, at this point you take the wrong burger straight back to the counter with your receipt, they (always!) apologise profusely, then immediately make you a new one the way you ordered it.

Sure, but try to send a complaint about that burger using a web form on McD website a week after the incident. Or try to complain about their phone app not working. You'll get the same amount of care as internet companies.

> Sure, but try to send a complaint about that burger using a web form on McD website a week after the incident.

There's a phone number you can call and report wrong orders to, and they'll send you coupons for free meals for your effort.

Re: Someone has stolen my Instagram account

#287

Post by swalsh »

Social media accounts can be worth real money in the right conditions. It might be time to start having some real regulations around these things. If my bank account was hijacked, the bank wouldn't be able to just ignore my pleas. I remember seeing a youtuber who made a living off her account about a year ago get her account hijacked, and it took months to resovle the issue. Youtube didn't really help her at all until it became quite public.

Re: Someone has stolen my Instagram account

#288

Post by megous »

sagichmal wrote: post #238
megous wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people don't have any influence. And that rules don't apply (or at least apply just selectively) to powerful people is no surprise either.

What is the purpose of this comment? It has the appearance of being a defense of an unjust status quo. Is that your intent? Or do you think a "reminder" of the existence and consequences of unjust power structures serves some other, useful purpose? It doesn't, but I'm interested to know your rationale.

I'm just saying that platform's behavior to top users, doesn't say much about what they can or can't do (or are doing) under their ToS to normal people.

Re: Someone has stolen my Instagram account

#289

Post by sneak »

heavyset_go wrote: post #212
Nextgrid wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Lots of the servers simply block based on tribalism though, irrespective of "toxic content".

My single-user instance, for example, which is entirely free of "toxic content", even with an extremely critical viewpoint, is blocked by an admin of a popular public instance of 17k users, none of whom can follow me (or can I follow), simply because I publicly disagreed with him about the virtue of instance censorship.

These things tend to naturally centralize, and that's always going to enable small groups to have an invisible, unearned, outsized influence over what people can see or read.

I think client-server is the wrong model for p2p networks. Look at the issues with the deliverability cartel and the relative inability of normal people to deliver messages to Gmail users without paying money into it.

Re: Someone has stolen my Instagram account

#290

Post by drivebycomment »

Scene_Cast2 wrote: post #78
Nextgrid wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the "theft" of the username would break any kind of law, as this was a company decision (since it done by an employee) and the username was never your property anyway. I'm assuming that employee definitely violated some internal policies, but nothing from a legal point of view. The only recourse I can see from a legal point of view is that they seem to have handed over the entire account (as the followe…

I think the OP's point was that there _should_ be a law, and that the current legislative framework is insufficient.

OP is simply ignorant. There are many laws that would make account take-over an illegal activity - it would depend on what exactly the perpetrator did, but wire fraud and criminal conspiracy most likely apply.

If the OP's point is about consumer protection in case of any dispute with online provider, there's maybe a tiny bit of truth, but that's not a criminal law.

If the OP's point is whether there's sufficient enforcement and investigation for account take-over, that would be correct, but it's not clear if the society would be better off spending large resources on investigating those when there are much more serious crimes not being investigated sufficiently and when companies are generally doing reasonable attempts at providing protection.

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