Zuck’s properties truly are a trash fire. Instagram should be sued to hell for this complete lack of oversight. Sadly, that’s never a thing.
Sued for what?
“They wanted my Instagram handle, and somehow they've now got it.”
41–50 of 111 posts
Re: “They wanted my Instagram handle, and somehow they've now got it.”
#42The underground marketplace for desirable social media handles (OG Handles) was explored in this excellent episode of Reply All: The Snapchat Thief [1]. In that story the basic technique was a SIM-swapping attack [2]. Fraudster calls the cell provider, claims to be the victim and that they lost their phone. Cell provider then ports the phone identity over to a new SIM. After that the fraudster just resets the account…
Ok sure, but how do you get the person's phone number in the first place?
There are hundreds of data brokers selling this type of info. An attacker who has a few minutes and a few dollars to spare will be able to acquire the average person's phone number. The underlying sources vary a lot.
Look up your own name or your friends on a site that is owned by or uses Intelius data, e.g. https://www.addresses.com/ - For many people (not all), their phone numbers come up right away. There are probably 500 different companies or websites doing the same thing.
Re: “They wanted my Instagram handle, and somehow they've now got it.”
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember for a while after Meta bought Oculus, they still had a Human support system. People who's Facebook accounts had been hacked/reset/whatever were buying Quest/Quest2s so they could get support for their Facebook account. It's obnoxious the extremes we have to go to. Especially when these representations of ourselves might reflect on us poorly through no fault of our own, and we have no recourse.
FB's net income for 2022 was $28.83 billion. They could drop that to $28.82 billion and fund a good size customer support team.
How dare you! Won't you think of the poor investors?
/s
Re: “They wanted my Instagram handle, and somehow they've now got it.”
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. I know 4 letter ones (even just random gibberish) are going for ~$50-100. 3 letter ones are $500-1000 at least. So anything which is a dictionary word or a noticeable abbreviation are worth much much more https://files.catbox.moe/5jp5qw.png https://files.catbox.moe/7gdx6k.png
It's so baffling to me, is there any research on whether a short name benefits marketing outreach or anything like that? I'd think a 4 letter gibberish name would put me off, if anything. I get if it's, like, "Mark" for some famous Mark, but if it was "ghfa", what's the point?
Good Health For All
Good Habits and Fitness Association
Global Health and Fitness Alliance
Gourmet Hotdog Fanatics Association
Gnarly Hops and Funky Ales
Re: “They wanted my Instagram handle, and somehow they've now got it.”
#45There was a story a while back about only fans bribing fb admins to ban competition or something. Would not be surprised if that was the route taken here.
Which was looking extremely suspect considering they were mentioning dates and times prior to the dates at least some of those supposedly bribed parties were even employed by Facebook. There may be truth in the story, but it is somewhat soured by the lies.
Re: “They wanted my Instagram handle, and somehow they've now got it.”
#46> So you're maybe thinking "Instagram must have a process for this, something you can do when your account is hacked?" and the answer is... kinda, but also it's completely useless. You follow the account hacked form on the website and it just endlessly redirects you to the "I need help logging in" page. If I follow the "I can't login" process for the handle they stole Instagram wants me to enter a previous password for the account, which I can't do because it's brand new (I tried).
My mom got hacked last week and I helped her recover her account and was absolutely appalled at the state of Instagram for this stuff.
* As they said, the official process to get your account back is an infinite loop back to the beginning of the process. If you follow the steps in their guide, you end up clicking a link that takes you back to the guide.
* Craziest to me, the "New Login to your account" email that you get when someone logs in from a new device includes a helpful "click here if this wasn't you" link, but that link is a 404.
* If someone hacks an account without 2FA, the first thing they do is enable 2FA on their own device, and the published process to recover your account no longer works whatsoever. The original owner is not able to turn 2FA off or to confirm it wasn't them. This makes 2FA weaponized as a hacking tool rather than a security tool.
* At this point, the only tool is an automated process where you submit a video of your face to prove it's your account. Online you can find endless complaints by people who run e.g. brand accounts because this facial recognition system doesn't have a face to key off of, and just fails on repeat. Plus I'm pretty sure I could use this to hack an account with a few NVIDIA tools.
Re: “They wanted my Instagram handle, and somehow they've now got it.”
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember for a while after Meta bought Oculus, they still had a Human support system. People who's Facebook accounts had been hacked/reset/whatever were buying Quest/Quest2s so they could get support for their Facebook account. It's obnoxious the extremes we have to go to. Especially when these representations of ourselves might reflect on us poorly through no fault of our own, and we have no recourse.
FB's net income for 2022 was $28.83 billion. They could drop that to $28.82 billion and fund a good size customer support team.
Jeff's divorce was expensive, they gotta make it up somehow.
Re: “They wanted my Instagram handle, and somehow they've now got it.”
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember for a while after Meta bought Oculus, they still had a Human support system. People who's Facebook accounts had been hacked/reset/whatever were buying Quest/Quest2s so they could get support for their Facebook account. It's obnoxious the extremes we have to go to. Especially when these representations of ourselves might reflect on us poorly through no fault of our own, and we have no recourse.
FB's net income for 2022 was $28.83 billion. They could drop that to $28.82 billion and fund a good size customer support team.
I think you underestimate either the cost or the scale of support tickets that would flood in constantly.
Re: “They wanted my Instagram handle, and somehow they've now got it.”
#49Re: “They wanted my Instagram handle, and somehow they've now got it.”
#50Meanwhile, I got locked out of the old FB account, with a passport scan being the only way they're going to open it again.
Strong password, 2FA, email, registered pgp key, and I still have access to everything, yet they still need to "verify", which makes no sense given they (supposedly) don't have any ID of mine from before.
Contrasting that to OP and yeah, an insider sounds like the more likely thing.