It is no secret that I love my dog – she is the cutest!
Being part of Gen Z, I and my sister obviously have an Instagram account for her. And – shameless self-promotion – her handle is @tessi_the_pupper.
Shockingly enough, we got hacked on Monday. When I tried to switch accounts, I was signed out. As I tried to sign back in, my e-mail address was unknown, so was my password.
So, what to do next?
As I was looking up what to do next, a lot of people complained that the Instagram support was not good and that they never got their account back. Luckily, this account neither contains personal information nor pictures of our face – just dog pictures. But we still felt violated and not knowing whether we would get the control over our account back was annoying.
I still decided to give it a try and got in touch with the support team. Luckily, by giving them information about previous account names, possibly linked accounts and previous e-mail addresses, they were able to identify me as the original owner. I received a password reset. All excited I tried to change the password. Unfortunately, it did not work. After changing the password, a verification mail was sent to a Russian e-mail address. Why should something work out the first time anyway?
Back to the support, I went and they told me to send them an e-mail address that had never been connected with Instagram ever before. This might sound a little overkill now but what do I say? My dog now has her own e-mail address.
After sending it to the Instagram support, I finally managed to reset my account. Yay!
But what to do to prevent your account from being hacked?
Here are some tips:
- Be selective with third-party applications
- Use strong passwords and change them regularly
- Enable two-factor authentication
Have you ever been hacked? What do you do to keep your online accounts safe? Let me know in the comments below!
Until then, stay safe!
