So my Instagram account got hacked early last week. I’m not sure when. I found out when someone sent me this screenshot on Tuesday showing my photos with a different profile, which seemed to be marketing porn.
I submitted support tickets to Instagram on Wednesday and again on Thursday but never got any reply. Strangely, a few other friends said that they were also hacked this week! But they were able to get access back in less than a day after contacting support.
Finally, I used a professional network I’m in to see if anyone had contacts at Instagram. This connected me to someone, but he was on vacation! After I bugged him, he eventually connected me to someone else, and she was able to get my account restored on Saturday afternoon. They are both political staff there, not the help desk.
I still don’t know how it got hacked so I don’t know if there was a breach at Instagram or if someone got my password. I would very much like to know, and I also find it unacceptable (but sadly not surprising) that their tech support didn’t even care to reply to me or to stop a malicious hacker compromising their platform.
This whole thing caused some unpleasant flashbacks to The Great Hack of 2013, but my security is much better now because I use truly random, computer-generated passwords (and a password manager) and I always utilize multifactor authentication when it’s an option. So I immediately changed a few passwords that were overdue anyway, but I don’t see anything else suspicious on other accounts. Still keeping a watchful eye open…
