We’ve cut out the story behind our hack and are going to get RIGHT into the nitty gritty details so if you are in the middle of your hacking nightmare you don’t waste time reading the info you don’t need!

OKAY IT’S HAPPENING EVERYONE STAY CALM: 

We aren’t sure at which point in your hacking journey you’ve stumbled upon this blog BUT we are going to use experience and our best efforts to equip you to get out of this horrible situation. 

Stage One: You just realized that someone has accessed your instagram account and changed email/username/password. 

1. Go STRAIGHT to your email that you use to sign up for the instagram account.

2. Search through all your emails for an email from instagram.security (make sure to check promotions/social/updates and your spam folder).

3. The email will mention someone changing your email on the account.

4. Now if you can find that email, look for a hyperlink that mentions “reverting email back” > click that and then go as fast as you can to change the password and set up 2 factor authentication.

Amidst trying to get into contact with instagram HQ we recommend getting on any platform you have and contacting any of your colleagues/friends to share and post with the goal of getting in touch with someone from instagram. If you are lucky enough to know a friend of a friend we’ve heard through multiple sources that this is a sure way to get your account back. You never know who your friends might know so it’s worth a shot!

Stage Two: Not everyone is lucky enough to find the email, but don’t lose hope! 

1. Go to the main sign in page of instagram type in your old user name and click “Forgot Password.”

2. It’ll take you to another page and at the bottom should be something that reads “need more help” (the answer is yes so click that!).

3. It should take you to a form where you fill out email, username and other details.

4. Here are the details to include in the bottom box:

   1. time and date which you were hack (your closest estimate will do)

   2. why it’s important to your business to get it back.

   3. Milk it a little with personal details, evoke some empathy from instagram.

   4. 1 of 3 things will happen following you filling out this form.

Email one: sorry account has already been deleted 

Email two: send us more info 

Email Three: send a photo of yourself holding a piece of paper with the provided code to prove identity.

The email responses are set on some sort of algorithm. What’s key (and tedious) is to just submit the form over and over until you get the third email. 

This is hard to do but there has to be some juggling of keeping the hacker busy while also working the backend to get instagrams attention. Some more ways to get Instagrams attention is to post on another feed asking if anyone knows someone that works at instagram that could help. That seems to be the best and most consistent option is just getting someone on the inside. But that is also probably the hardest option since it’s not like we all have instagram employees in our pocket. 

To tell you the truth we ended up paying the ransom and getting our account back but we think if we had some of the above information earlier we might have been able to get it back before it came to paying the hacker. 

We will say that the hacker did give us our account back. I was definitely worried there for a bit that we might pay and not even get the account back so the silver lining is that we have our account back!. 

Prevention Steps:

In terms of preventing this all together the best and easiest way of doing that is setting up a 2 factor authentication system. All social media platforms should offer it and it’s basically where anytime someone tries to log into your account it’ll send your phone number a code that is also required to get into the account. This prevents hackers from gaining access to your account.

How it Happened & What to watch out for:

Also the way the hacker gained access to our account is through an email. It was posed as a press deal and asked us to verify our instagram. A pop up came through a link on the email asking us to login to our account. DON’T DO IT. Don’t put your instagram email and password up anywhere to anyone. Legit press emails won’t ask for this information. Also don’t be fooled these emails are well made and scripted to seem legit. There are other ways I’m sure but this is the experience we had. 

We are so so so thankful that we didn’t lose y’all! We are so grateful for this little community and the way the Lord has blessed it and grown it over the lat 10 years. This has been eye opening and we want t o be more involved on this platform! We have some fun things coming so stay tuned and stay safe! 

Here are some other links with information and tutorials! 

https://www.online-tech-tips.com/computer-tips/how-to-recover-a-hacked-instagram-account/

https://stillmiracle.com/instagram-account-hacked/

https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/what-to-do-if-your-instagram-account-gets-hacked-stolen-or-deleted