Forewarned is forearmed. And we cannot leave you unarmed in a fight against fraud.
Recently, the author of the Telegram channel Dnativ told a story that happened to his friend. The story of an unusual hacking attempt.
She received a message to Direct from a verified account (supposedly from Instagram support). The content was simple:
"You have violated copyrights in one of your publications. Your account will be deleted in 24 hours. Follow the link below to avoid this."
You can ask why is it a scam. Let's figure it out.
- Instagram tech support will NEVER send you messages via Direct. They send notifications inside the application or to the email linked to your account. If you received an email from Instagram, you check if it's real in the Instagram app Settings - Security - Emails from Instagram.
- Since in Direct messages not the username is displayed, but the profile name, you may consider that this is texting with a verified Instagram account. But this is fundamentally wrong. For example, the message was from "Instagram (and blue check)", but if you open the account, you will see that his username is, for example, @jonathanespericutea. As the telegram channel suggests, this is the account of a Mexican footballer who was apparently hacked.
- You are prompted to go to the site, where you need to enter your login information for your Instagram account. Would real Instagram support resort to such measures?
It is one of the newest and dangerous ways of fraud. Remember it and we hope you won't face any scammers.
