HN is becoming a tool to report such crap. can we stop that pls. I know it may help some but get back their account but it ultimately does not solve the problem and it unfair as most people will not know how to make the necessary drama.
+ its annoying non-content post we get here every other week.
Someone has stolen my Instagram account
41–50 of 351 posts
Re: Someone has stolen my Instagram account
#42It's part of ToS you can lose your account at any time for any reason. And it's their first rule.
Re: Someone has stolen my Instagram account
#43Looking at the screenshot of the IG story, it indicates that the compromised account is now followed by @blood, @murder and @dead.
Looks like whoever took over the account is not some random kid with a friend at Facebook, but a "professional" account hijacker.
Whether they compromised the account via hacking, bribes or social engineering is anyone's guess, but it seems like this ain't their first rodeo.
Re: Someone has stolen my Instagram account
#44I find it strange that the Facebook employee wouldn't just forcibly change OP's username to something else (e.g. @danny123) then give the desired name to their friend. Actually stealing someone's account seems like an over the top and unlikely way to go about this.
Re: Someone has stolen my Instagram account
#45The arbitrariness with which these companies rule over our digital lives infuriates me more from month to month. We do our best to fight dictators in the physical world but somehow accept them in the digital realm.
While they do have power over users on their platform, they're voluntary applications that people choose to give control to for convenience and publicity. Unlike credit bureaus who actually ruin peoples' lives with their carelessness and you can't even opt out, social media apps are purely opt-in, and you don't get your wages garnished or bank accounts emptied or lose your ability to drive because of them. And while…
> they're voluntary applications
...in an unfree economic system (patents and IP give monopolies) with a black box money system (money is an enclosed protocol). Cooperative Open Value Networks are the future. [1]
Re: Someone has stolen my Instagram account
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Didn't a similar thing happen with a famous Soccer player?
Yes. Instagram’s explanation was they thought the account was an impersonator of Andrés Iniesta and disabled it/gave it away. Usually if Instagram wants your account they add underscores to the original handle like they did with @sussexroyal.
And this is why I’ll never use Facebook or Instagram again. I can’t even begin to imagine and angst the OP is going through right now. Imagine if it was your business? My sister uses Instagram exclusively to market and promote her beauty salon business. I can only imagine what her reaction would be if something like this happened to her (really my only reference). Letting people have access to data let’s people manipulate that data. Whether this was an insider giving his friend the account or it was hacked and taken over, it doesn’t matter how, things like the OP’s situation should NEVER exist.
Re: Someone has stolen my Instagram account
#47There'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... )
I assume there is no evidence except an account full of pictures of the guy?
Maybe the employee claim is wrong, who knows, but determining who owns the account should be trivial. And frankly, given what we know about how the Twitter "hack" went down (rate limits? sign offs? resetting 2FA? impersonating accounts?!) it is fully believable.
Re: Someone has stolen my Instagram account
#48I'm worried about the failure of Internet literacy reflected here. As far as I can tell, the author of the Twitter thread is just some guy, not famous or otherwise widely known to be reputable. And he's presented no evidence which can be independently confirmed - he could be misunderstanding the scenario, or the framing could be made up, or the screenshots could be faked, or any of a million other things. But a bunch of us - 201, as of when I'm writing this comment - are signal boosting and discussing his accusation based on no information beyond our preconceptions about what kinds of things Facebook might do.
Re: Someone has stolen my Instagram account
#49There'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.
Re: Someone has stolen my Instagram account
#50This is a very common thing. In fact influencers and FB employees publicly and loudly talk about this method and no one stops them. "Hey I'm visiting fb headquarters anyone want a new @ or a checkmark?" Why do random fb employees even have this capability?
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