I was Hacked!

How I got hacked and tips to keep your social media safe

I got HACKED! As hard as that is to believe, it is true.  I was so dumbfounded.  I didn’t know hacking Instagram accounts was a thing.  If you’re thinking, that’s what happens to other people, I hear you.  That is what I thought — until it happened to me.  So let me share a few details of my ordeal and some tricks I learned from this incident.

First, you need to activate the 2-step authentication on your Instagram account and Facebook.  I did not know about this feature before the hacking. (If I had activated this feature before, they could not have hacked my account.) You can be sure it was the first thing I did once my account was recovered.  Stop what you’re doing now (including reading this post) and do it.  I will wait. . . . . .

How I got HACKED

I received an email the day before, asking to advertise on my Instagram page. The email was worded strangely.  I remember I didn’t understand what they were asking.  I responded, asking for clarification.  Bloggers get these kinds of emails regularly, so I didn’t think much about it.  But what I do remember was when I clicked on the link provided, it took me to Instagram that was spelled with an ‘E’.  I don’t remember having to enter my log in information, but I guess I did at some point.  This is how they got my username and password to Instagram. Second, never ever enter your log in information from someone else’s links.  What is ridiculous is, I knew this.  I’ve gotten phishing emails before, and I know not to do this.  But on this day, I did.  Boy, did I regret it!

The hackers waited until the middle of the night to take over my Instagram Account. This is strategically planned, because Instagram sends an email to alert you someone logged into your account from an unknown device.  Then if the email is changed,  Instagram sends a second email alerting it was changed.  You can click on the link to ‘revert it back’ from this email.  However, if you don’t do it quickly,  Instagram allows the change, and now your email and password are forever changed.  By doing this in the middle of the night, the victims won’t know for hours, which is what happened to me and other unsuspecting bloggers.

The hackers did this at 12:30 am. I didn’t discover it until 6:50 am.  It was too late, as the links to ‘revert back’ in the email from Instagram no longer functioned.  I later received an email from the hackers informing me they hacked my email, and if I wanted it back I would have to pay $$.  It wasn’t a lot of money, only $230 at first.  The hackers said they had no interest in my account—they only wanted money, but if I didn’t pay in three hours, they would either sell the account or delete it.  But once I began reading about other bloggers who were victims of hackers, they all said they never got their accounts back after paying the ransom.  The hackers later discovered I had opened another account, and messaged me on day six, telling me the price was now $700!

I tried to go through Instagram for help. Let me be clear, Instagram is NOT easily accessible with hacked account issues.  They don’t answer phone calls.  They don’t have an email address to reach out to them.  They have a way to request help, but if you don’t know how to navigate through it, you won’t even find the form.  Thanks to Youtube videos, I was able to find it.

One of my blogger friends Brooke Broughton (such a sweetheart) realized she couldn’t find my Instagram account, and reached out to me on Facebook. She knew other bloggers who had also been hacked and suspected I had been too.  She led me to one of them, who wrote a blog post and I quickly reached out to her via email.  She recommended I contact Juan, who helped get her account back.  The next morning, after trying all day to recover the account, I decided to seek help from Juan. Let me tell you, he was super helpful.  He worked tirelessly for several days to gain the account back.  He would answer my messages just after 6:00 am each day and sometimes was still working on the account until 1:30 am.  He is very smart and persevered every day until he was able to recover the account.  I could never have done it without his help.

The process is to enter your username and try to log in at the log in screen, click on forgot password, then enter username, email, or phone number on the next screen. Once you have done this, click on ‘Need more help’.  This will take you to a colorful screen to fill in the information and request support.  Juan gave me specific instructions on how to fill in these fields and how to respond.  I don’t know if they only work with certain responses, but wording the additional information field exactly as he told me worked.

We went through this process for several days.  On each of those days, I had to hold a piece of paper with my full name, my Instagram name and a specific code and take a selfie with this paper.  Finally on the seventh day, I got an email asking me to confirm my email address.  I was so excited and nervous I couldn’t respond.  I had to ask Juan if it was for real.  Thankfully, it was!!

I should mention that somewhere in the process, the hackers changed the name of my account. Another good friend reached out on Facebook to let me know he saw my account while perusing Instagram.  Luckily, I was able to change the name back to my original account name once it was recovered.  Some bloggers have had to change their account name after recovery.

Tips to safeguard your Instagram

In looking back, I may have made myself a target. When I reached 10,000 followers, I posted the infamous photo holding the balloons with the hashtag 10K.  The very next day I was hacked.  I believe that flagged my account to the hackers as one of value to attempt to hack.

These are the tips I follow now to keep my accounts safe:

1. Set up 2-step authentication (you can do this on all social media and your email accounts)
2. Make your passwords unique and different for every account. My good friend John, who also works for the Federal government, advised me of this method for passwords.  Each password should contain 2 capital letters, 2 lower case letters, 2 special characters, and 2 numbers. They should be in no way tied to any personal data, such as birthdates, etc. And your password to emails, social media accounts, etc. should all be different. This makes it difficult to keep up with, I know. But I will now keep my passwords in my phone or on a computer, and have  a secondary source in case I lose either one.
3. Never enter your password from a link found in an email. If the link requires you to log in, DO NOT DO IT!

Please share this information with your friends to help them keep their accounts safe. Let’s help each other and keep those hackers out of business!   Reach out on Instagram or email if you have any questions.  I’ll be glad to help you.  monicasmix@yahoo.com