There’s a black market business being run by Meta employees, selling the ability to take over these accounts from the inside for a price. They then funnel that cash back to family and friends and launder that cash through various other means. NYT reported about it last year.
I'd love the link if you have it
“They wanted my Instagram handle, and somehow they've now got it.”
91–100 of 111 posts
Re: “They wanted my Instagram handle, and somehow they've now got it.”
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you underestimate either the cost or the scale of support tickets that would flood in constantly.
I think you underestimate $28.83 billion.
“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’m pretty sure the math of 28.83B - 28.82B is 0.01B or ten million dollars to support 2-3 Billion users worldwide.
Which is laughable.
Re: “They wanted my Instagram handle, and somehow they've now got it.”
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
>but if it was "ghfa", what's the point? You build your brand from the bottom up based on that handle alone. Totally possible and your example is actually pretty good, no weird letters either (x,q,y,z)
From a recent Marketplace article: Liquid Death is an “entertainment machine” with a water brand attached - https://www.marketplace.org/2023/01/25/liquid-death-is-an-en... > In 2017, Cessario, a longtime advertising creative who had previously worked on marketing campaigns for Netflix and Organic Valley, released a commercial for Liquid Death canned water. The product didn’t exist yet, but the commercial went viral.…
That is an oddly depressing thing to me. Creating noise out of nothing with the sole intent to achieve popularity and gain. When so many others try hard to create a meaningful thing or improve an existing one, the easier choice seems to be to just try and "blow up" with the algorithms.
Re: “They wanted my Instagram handle, and somehow they've now got it.”
#94The 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…
Love how using a VoIP number would totally cancel out that attack, but so many websites require you to have a 'real' phone number. I assume its mostly to weed out scammers.
Re: “They wanted my Instagram handle, and somehow they've now got it.”
#95If I was Mark Zuckerberg, and this happened at my company, I genuinely would not be able to sleep at night until I had resolved this appropriately.
But presumably that's why I'm not running Meta and Mark is, well, a billionaire.
Re: “They wanted my Instagram handle, and somehow they've now got it.”
#96We get what we deserve. It's obvious in retrospect that one of the main ways tech companies make money is scale, without the costs that physical based companies bear with scale. For example, you go to a shop, and they have employees they have to pay. When the shop scales, so does the number of employees. Tech companies aren't like that though. You write software, then scale it to as many users as possible (billions,…
Could you elaborate on "We get what we deserve"? I don't see how we (users of Instagram or social media as a whole, I guess) deserve this.
Re: “They wanted my Instagram handle, and somehow they've now got it.”
#97IMO, companies should have draconian rules for this kind of corrupt shit - if that's the case. Fired on the spot. Clawbacks. etc.
Criminal activity should go beyond getting fired, otherwise the real conman can just pay stooges one at a time.
If someone sold furniture from the office in the alley behind the office, they'd hopefully be reported to the police.
Surely this counts as "cybercrime". Unauthorized access to a computer system and all that.
Re: “They wanted my Instagram handle, and somehow they've now got it.”
#98> 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 f…
I never used Instagram much (anything attached to Zuckerberg is rotten), but I recently tried to log in to check something via desktop. I have email-based 2FA set up, so it said to check my email for the code (while showing me my correct email address).
The email never arrived, I checked the spam folder and all that. After a while I clicked "Send a new code" and got the error "Select a valid choice. 0 is not one of the available choices." Oooooookay. I cleared cookies etc and tried again, and it continues to demand, while failing to send, a confirmation code. But this second login attempt did cause them to send me an automated "New login to Instagram" email.
Lastly, I clicked the Get Support link, and it just pops a dialog that says "If you’re unable to get the security code, you need to use the Instagram app to secure your account." I do not have the Instagram app, and newly installing it while my account is locked would be pointless.
So, I guess that account is unrecoverable now. Great work, Meta.
Re: “They wanted my Instagram handle, and somehow they've now got it.”
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
From a recent Marketplace article: Liquid Death is an “entertainment machine” with a water brand attached - https://www.marketplace.org/2023/01/25/liquid-death-is-an-en... > In 2017, Cessario, a longtime advertising creative who had previously worked on marketing campaigns for Netflix and Organic Valley, released a commercial for Liquid Death canned water. The product didn’t exist yet, but the commercial went viral.…
That is an oddly depressing thing to me. Creating noise out of nothing with the sole intent to achieve popularity and gain. When so many others try hard to create a meaningful thing or improve an existing one, the easier choice seems to be to just try and "blow up" with the algorithms.
The music industry has been doing similar to their artists. Performers are expected to have a hit on social media before it can be released on Spotify, etc.
Re: “They wanted my Instagram handle, and somehow they've now got it.”
#100This is the #1 problem with google/facebook/other giant companies - zero due process. They build a business around minimal human interaction with our staff and it shows when real problems come up. I'm frankly sick of hacker news being a facebook/google/whatever ticketing system. And yet, there's no alternative.
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.
My favourite thing is the fake typing ellipsis that chat bots do, as they have infinite time and patience.