How to hack instagram android
39 Tricks and Features You Need to Know
Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms, with over one billion monthly active users. And while you may think you know everything about this photo and video sharing app, there are actually a lot of Instagram hacks and features that you probably don’t know about.
In this blog post, we’re going to share with you 39 of the best Instagram hacks and features on the app. From using hashtags to get more followers, to editing your photos like a pro, to finding the best filters for your images, these tricks will definitely take your Instagram game up a notch.
Let’s dive in.
General Instagram hacks
Instagram hacks for photo and video sharing
Instagram Story tricks
Instagram bio and profile hacks
Instagram hashtag hacks
Instagram direct messaging hacks
Instagram for Business hacks
Instagram Reels hacks
Bonus: Download a free checklist that reveals the exact steps a fitness influencer used to grow from 0 to 600,000+ followers on Instagram with no budget and no expensive gear.
Ready to impress your fans and wow your followers? These Instagram hacks will make people think you’re a technological genius.
1. Stop seeing posts or stories from accounts you follow but don’t loveYou don’t want to see any more of your aunt’s ferret videos, but you don’t want to hurt her feelings with an unfollow, either. The solution? Give her a mute!
How to do it:
Muting Stories, Posts, and Notes
- Go to the account you want to mute
- Tap the Following button
- Click Mute
- Choose whether to mute posts, Stories, Notes, or all
- You can also mute Stories by clicking the three dots in the right-hand corner and pressing Mute
- If you want to mute directly from a post in your feed, click the three dots in the top right of the post and choose Hide.
Then, click Mute
Muting Messages
- Click the message icon in the top right corner of your feed
- Choose a message from the account you want to mute
- Click on their profile name at the top of the screen
- Choose to Mute messages, Mute calls, or both
Keep Lark at your fingertips and get Hefe out of your sight. This secret Instagram feature lets you customize your menu of filter options.
How to do it:
- When posting a photo or video, go to Filter
- Press and hold the filter you want to move, and move it up or down the list
- Move any filters you don’t regularly use to the end of the list
Take a walk down memory lane with a review of all your past photo likes.
(So. Many. Puppers.)
How to do it:
- Go to your profile
- Open the hamburger menu in the top right corner
- Tap Your activity
- Tap Likes
- Click on any photos or videos you want to view again
If you used Instagram.com to like posts, you won’t be able to see them here.
4. Clear your search historyMake sure no one ever finds out that you’ve been hunting for photos of “Mr. Clean with shirt off”. This Instagram hack lets you wipe your Instagram search history squeaky clean.
How to do it:
- Go to your profile
- Open the hamburger menu in the top right corner
- Tap Your activity
- Tap Recent searches
- Click Clear all and confirm
Set up notifications for other accountsAdd alerts for your favorite accounts and never miss a new post from your favorite Japanese mascot fan page again.
How to do it:
- Visit the profile page of the account you’d like to get notifications for
- Tap the Alarm bell button in the top right
- Toggle the content you want to receive notifications about: Posts, Stories, Reels or Live Videos
Think of “Collections” as your digital scrapbooks. Use this Instagram trick to save your favourite posts for later.
How to do it:
- Go to a post you’d like to save
- Tap the bookmark icon underneath the post you want to save
- This automatically adds the post to a generic collection. If you’d like to send it to a specific one, choose Save Collection; here you can select an existing collection or create and name a new one
- To see your saved posts and collections, visit your profile and tap the hamburger menu.
Then tap Saved
This Instagram hack is the equivalent of the Disney vault. You can hide old posts out of sight with the “Archive” function.
How to do it:
- Tap … at the top of the post you want to remove
- Select Archive
- To review all archived posts, go to your profile and tap the hamburger icon in the top right corner
- Tap Archive
- At the top of the screen click Archive to view either Posts or Stories
If you want to restore content to your public profile, simply tap Show on Profile at any time and it’ll show up in its original spot.
8. Limit your screen timeJust because you can scroll forever doesn’t mean you should.
Save yourself from yourself with Instagram’s built-in daily timer.
How to do it:
- Go to your profile and tap the hamburger menu
- Tap Time Spent
- Tap Set daily reminder to take breaks
- Or, tap Set daily time limits
- Choose an amount of time and tap Turn On
Make your feed stand out with these Instagram features for your photos and video content.
9. Create line breaks in your captionOne of our favorite Instagram caption tricks is creating line breaks that let you take control over the pacing of your caption.
How to do it:
- Edit your photo and proceed to the caption screen
- Write your caption
- To access the Return key, enter 123 on your device’s keyboard
- Use Return to add breaks to your caption
Note: While the breaks will start a new line, they won’t create the white space that you would see between two paragraphs.
To create a paragraph break, write out your photo caption in your phone’s notes app and copy it over to Instagram. Wanna break up lines even further? Try using bullet points, dashes, or other punctuations.
Prep your content to post at the best times with the help of Hootsuite’s Instagram scheduling tool.
How to do it:
Watch this video to find out how to schedule Instagram posts (and Stories! and Reels!) in advance:
Note: Check out our guide to scheduling posts on Instagram to learn how to do this from a personal account.
PS: You can schedule Instagram Stories, Instagram Reels, and Carousels with Hootsuite too!
11. Choose a cover photo for your videoYour hair looked particularly cute 10 seconds into your video, and you want the world to know. Here’s how to handpick the still that kicks off your vid.
How to do it:
- Use a graphic design tool like Visme or Adobe Spark to create an intro image, and then place it at the beginning or end of your video with editing software
- Choose a Filter and Trim, then tap Next
- Click your video on the top left of the screen, where it says Cover
- Select the intro image from your camera roll
A picture is worth a thousand words—so do you really need other people adding to the conversation? Here’s an Instagram hack that helps you keep the comment section quiet.
How to do it:
- From your profile, select the hamburger menu from the top right and tap Settings
- Tap Privacy
- Tap Comments
- Allow or Block comments from specific profiles
Read on for our favorite Instagram Story hacks or watch the video below for our favorite tricks of 2022:
13. Record video hands-freeHands-free mode is like a more low-maintenance Instagram Boyfriend. Reliable. Takes instruction well.
Loyal. Loving.
How to do it:
- Click the + button at the top right of your feed
- Tap Story
- Tap Camera
- Swipe through the options at the side of the screen—normal, Boomerang, etc.—and stop at the Hands-Free recording option
- Tap the record button at the bottom of the screen to begin recording
- To stop recording, either let the maximum time run out or tap the capture button again
For when everyone needs to see the hilarious prank you pulled on Daryl in accounting—except your boss.
How to do it:
Method 1
- Go to your profile and tap the hamburger menu
- Tap Settings
- Then tap Privacy
- Next tap Story
- Tap Hide Story From
- Select the people you’d like to hide your story from, then tap Done (iOS) or the checkmark symbol (Android)
- To unhide your story from someone, tap the blue checkmark to unselect them
Method 2
You can also choose people to hide your story from as you’re looking at who’s seen your story.
- Tap … on the bottom of your screen
- Tap Story settings
- Click Hide story from
- Choose the users you want to hide your Story from
Note: Hiding your story from someone is different from blocking them, and doesn’t prevent them from seeing your profile and posts.
15. Use your own fonts on StoriesWhy Instagram won’t allow you to just use Jokerman font natively, we may never know. But where there’s a wackily designed ’90s serif, there’s a way.
How to do it:
- Open a font tool. There are plenty of free options via your web browser, like igfonts.io. Be wary of third-party font keyboard apps that can monitor everything you type, though!
- Type your message into your font tool of choice
- Select the font you want
- Copy the text and paste it into your story (though this works for profile bios and post captions, too)
Change the cover of your Story highlightsUse this Instagram trick to highlight your highlights with a fresh first image.
How to do it:
- Tap your highlight, then tap Edit Highlight
- Tap Edit Cover
- Select your photo from your camera roll
Change the hues of individual letters, or even harness the magic of the rainbow with this sneaky trick to color your world.
How to do it:
- Click the + button at the top right of your feed
- Select Story
- Type your message, then select the portion of the text you’d like to change color
- Choose a color from the color wheel at the top of the screen
- Repeat for any words you want to change the color of
For when one snapshot of your DIY macrame dog bikini per post isn’t enough.
How to do it:
- Click the + button at the top right of your feed
- Select Story
- Click the photo icon at the bottom left of your screen
- Click the Select button in the top right
- Select multiple photos to post to your Story
- Click the arrow twice to post
Or, watch this video on how to add multiple photos in one Instagram Story:
Want more tips and tricks for Stories? Check out our long list of the best Instagram Story hacks in 2021.
19. Find more colors to draw withDon’t let your creativity falter because of Instagram’s short color list.
Get every color under the sun with this Instagram hack.
How to do it:
- Click the + button at the top right of your feed
- Select Story
- Upload a photo or video
- Click … in the top right corner
- Then, click Draw
- Choose the pen icon
- Hold down on one of the colors at the bottom of the screen. A gradient palette will appear and you can choose any colour to use in your Story
Bonus: Download a free checklist that reveals the exact steps a fitness influencer used to grow from 0 to 600,000+ followers on Instagram with no budget and no expensive gear.
Get the free guide right now!
Don’t let your bio be an afterthought! These Instagram features will help you manage your profile, presence, and discoverability.
Even if your friends’ feeds are full of photos of your Margarita Monday exploits, the world never has to know.
How to do it:
- Go to your profile
- Tap the person in a box icon beneath your bio to go to the Photos of You tab
- Tap the photo you want to remove from your profile
- Tap the three dots icon in the upper right-hand corner and select Tag Options
- Select Remove Me From Post or Hide from My Profile
Note: You can also prevent tagged photos from appearing on your profile in the first place. Just go to the Photos of You tab and select any photo. Then, select Edit on the top right. Here, you can toggle Manually Approve Tags.
21. Add line breaks to bioUse this Instagram trick to break up that block of text and share your info in a visually appealing way.
How to do it:
- Open up a notes app and write out your bio as you’d like it to appear—line breaks included
- Select all the text and choose Copy
- Open the Instagram app
- Tap your profile image icon to visit your profile
- Tap the Edit Profile button
- Paste the text from your notes app into the biofield
- Tap Done to save your changes
Harness that Instagram SEO by slipping keywords into the name field of your bio, and you’ll be more likely to pop up in search results for that industry.
How to do it:
- Tap on Edit Profile on the top right of your Instagram profile
- In the Name section, change the text to include your keywords
- Tap Done on the top right corner of your screen
- Or, change your Category to reflect your keywords
Add special characters and use special fonts for your profileJazzing up your profile with fun fonts or the perfect wingding is as easy as a copy-and-paste. (One note: use special characters sparingly to accommodate accessibility! Not every accessible reading tool will be able to interpret them correctly.)
How to do it:
- Open a Word or Google doc.
- Start typing your bio. To place a special character, tap Insert, then Advanced Symbol
- Add the icons where you would like them in your bio
- Open your Instagram profile in a web browser and tap Edit Profile
- Copy and paste your bio from the Word or Google doc to your Instagram bio
- Tap Done when you’re finished.
When it comes to discovery, hashtags might be the most important of all Instagram features.
So make sure you know these simple hashtag hacks.
If you want to be discovered, including hashtags in your post is key. Here’s how to figure out which ones are the best fit for getting your content it’s Star is Born moment.
How to do it:
- Select the magnifying glass icon to visit the Explore tab
- Type in a keyword and tap the Tags column
- Choose a hashtag from the list
- This will take you to a page of posts bearing that hashtag
- Search top posts for similar and relevant hashtags
Get inspiration in your feed and never miss the latest #NailArt masterpieces (are those… Tom and Jerry nails?).
How to do it:
- Select the magnifying glass icon to visit the Explore tab
- Type in the hashtag you want to follow
- On the hashtag page click the Follow button
Hide hashtags on postsYes, Hashtags get you discovered. But they can also be visual clutter. (Or just look a little… thirsty.) Here’s how to reap the benefits without cramping your style.
How to do it:
Method 1
- One easy way to hide your hashtags is to simply leave them out of your caption altogether and put them in a comment below your post
- Once you’ve got another comment, your hashtags will be safely hidden in the comments section
Method 2
Another method is to separate your hashtags from the rest of your caption by burying them beneath an avalanche of line breaks.
- Simply type in 123 when composing a caption
- Select Return
- Enter a piece of punctuation (whether a period, bullet, or dash), then hit Return again
- Repeat steps 2 to 4 at least five times
- Instagram hides captions after three lines, so your hashtags won’t be viewable unless your followers tap the more option on your post
Hide hashtags in StoriesHelp your Story be seen by more people, without cluttering it up with hashtags.
How to do it:
- Click the + button at the top right of your feed
- Tap Story
- Choose an image to upload to your Story
- Add hashtags using the Story sticker, or by adding them as text
- Tap on your hashtag and pinch it down with two fingers. Begin to minimize it until you can’t see it anymore.
Note: You can also use this trick with location tags and mentions if you want to keep your Stories visually clean.
Instagram direct messaging hacksNeed some help managing the people sliding into your DMs? These Instagram tricks are exactly what you need.
28. Turn off your activity statusYou don’t have to let the world know when you are or aren’t online: maintain an aura of mystery!
How to do it:
- Go to your profile and tap the hamburger menu; tap Settings
- Tap Privacy
- Tap Activity Status
- Toggle off Activity Status
Send disappearing content to your friendsNew in 2022, Instagram announces Notes–a feature that lets you post disappearing notes to your followers.
How to do it:
- Click the message icon in the top right of your screen
- Click the + sign under Notes
- Compose your note
- Choose to share with Followers you follow back or Close Friends
Note: Notes can be a maximum of 60 characters in length.
30. Create chat groupsIf you want to stay in touch with your closest friends or make a chat with your best customers, this Instagram hack can help.
How to do it:
- Click the message icon in the top right of your screen
- Click the new chat icon
- Add the group members you want to chat with
- If you want to change the group name, theme, or add more members, click the chat name at the top of your screen
Use these Instagram hacks to make your business stand out online.
Officially declaring yourself as a business on Instagram gives you some serious advantages, like running ads and getting insights. If you’re a brand, what are you waiting for?
How to do it:
- Go to your profile and tap the hamburger menu
- Tap Settings
- Then tap Account
- Tap Switch to Business Account
- We recommend that you connect your business account to a Facebook Page that is associated with your business. This will make it easier to use all of the features available for businesses. At this time, only one Facebook Page can be connected to your business account
- Add details such as your business or accounts’ category and contact information
- Tap Done
For more tips on how to optimize your profile, check out our post on Instagram Bio Ideas for Business.
Opening an Etsy shop or trying to bump up your e-commerce sales? Shoppable Instagram posts make it easy to promote and sell products directly from your feed.
How to do it:
- Create a Facebook Shop and Catalog
- Go to Instagram and click Settings
- Click Shopping
- Click Products
- Choose the product catalog you want to connect to Instagram
- Click Done
Once complete, you’ll be able to tag products in posts just like you tag other accounts.
33. Send automated welcome messages to new followersWelcome new followers with a fun welcome message. This Instagram hack automates an important touchpoint so you can stay connected to your fans.
How to do it:
- Create an account with StimSocial
- Add your Instagram account
- Choose a subscription plan
- Craft your one-of-a-kind welcome message
Add a link treeOrganize your links with a user-friendly link tree. Here’s how to build one with Hootsuite.
How to do it:
- Visit the Hootsuite app directory and download the oneclick.bio app
- Authorize your Instagram accounts
- Create a new link tree page in the app’s stream
- Add links, text, and background images
- Publish your page
If you don’t use Hootsuite, consider building a link tree for your Instagram bio with a tool like linktr.ee or build your own.
Instagram Reels hacksOf all the new Instagram features, Reels are the latest and greatest. Use these Instagram tricks to make your Reels go viral!
35. Schedule ReelsSchedule your Reels in advance and you never have to worry about missing the moment. All you need is a social media management tool. We’ll show you how to do it using our favourite one: Hootsuite.
How to do it:
- Open Hootsuite Composer
- Select Instagram Story
- Choose your Instagram profile
- Upload your video and add copy
- Under the Notes for publisher section write, “Post to Reels”
- Choose the date and time you want to publish the Reel. You’ll receive a push notification when it’s time to post!
Why have one piece of video content when you can have more? Here’s how to make the most out of your Stories by converting them into Reels.
How to do it:
1. Select the Stories Highlight you want to use for your Reel and then tap the “Convert to Reel” button.
2. Pick your audio (you can search, use music you’ve saved, or pick from the suggested tracks) and Instagram does the work to synch the audio with your clip
3.
Click “Next,” and you have a final editing screen where you can add effects, stickers, text, etc.
4. When you’re done fine-tuning, the last step is setting your sharing settings. This is also where you can add a caption, tag people, locations, and edit or add a custom cover.
5. You can adjust the Advanced Settings if necessary, specifically if your Reel is part of a paid partnership. Here you can also enable auto-generated captions and manage your data usage, if necessary.
6. Tap Share and watch your new Reel highlight go viral! (Hopefully.)
85% of Facebook content is watched without sound–so it’s safe to assume your audience is skipping the audio on your Reels. To improve accessibility, and make it easier for people to understand your content add captions to your Reels.
How to do it:
- Click the + button at the top right of your feed
- Select Reels
- Upload your Reel
- Click the stickers button on the top toolbar
- Choose captions
Note: One of the best Instagram caption tricks is to wait until the audio has been transcribed and then go through and edit the text for any mistakes.
Ever wondered how influencers get those cool backgrounds for their Reels? Use this Instagram feature to get your very own green screen.
How to do it:
- Click the + button at the top right of your feed
- Select Reels
- Choose the camera option
- Scroll through the filters at the bottom of your screen until you find green screen
- Choose a filter and click Try it now
Don’t let your latest Reel muck up the aesthetic pleasure of your Instagram feed! Customize your Reel cover photo and keep that front page sparkling.
How to do it:
- Click the + button at the top right of your feed
- Select Reels
- Upload your Reel
- When you’re finished editing, click Next
- Click Edit cover
- Choose a cover image that matches your feed’s aesthetic
Manage your Instagram presence alongside your other social channels and save time using Hootsuite.
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How any Instagram account could be hacked in less than 10 minutes
Graham CLULEY
July 15, 2019
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A security researcher has been awarded $30,000 after discovering a serious vulnerability that could potentially have put any Instagram account at risk of being hacked.
Following a recent increase in rewards offered for the discovery of critical account takeover vulnerabilities in Facebook and Instagram, Indian security researcher Laxman Muthiyah chose to take a close look at the photo-sharing service.
As he describes in a blog post, Muthiyah explored whether there might be a vulnerability in how Instagram handled password reset requests for users who have forgotten their login credentials.
Mutiyah found that when users asked for a password reset via Instagram’s web interface, the site would email a reset link to the user’s email account.
After a few minutes of testing Mutiyah couldn’t find any bugs, and so turned his attention instead to how smartphone users recover access to their Instagram accounts.
What Mutiyah found was that Instagram offered the option for users locked out of their accounts to request that a six-digit secret security code be sent to their mobile phone number or email account. If that passcode is entered, a user can regain access to their Instagram account.
In theory, if a hacker could enter the six-digit security code they would be able to break into the Instagram account (and reset the password locking out the legitimate owner.)
Now, that passcode could potentially be stolen if a hacker had somehow managed to gain access to their target’s email account, or had hijacked control of their victim’s mobile phone number via a SIM swap scam.
But Mutiyah wondered if there might be another way to break into accounts if neither of those options were available.
Mutiyah realised that all a hacker would need to do was enter the correct six digit code – a code that could be any combination between 000000 and 999999 – within the ten minute window Instagram would accept the code before expiring it.
Up to one million numbers to be entered within ten minutes, in order to change an Instagram account’s password.
Of course, the likes of Facebook and Instagram aren’t going to simply sit quietly as an automated script tries a brute force attack to guess the correct security code. Instead they have rate-limiting in place to detect when multiple attempts have been made to get past the security check and slow down subsequent attempts – meaning the ten minute window of opportunity expires.
In Mutiyah’s tests he discovered that when he cycled through 1000 attempts to guess an Instagram account’s security codes, 250 of them went through and the subsequent 750 requests were rate limited.
However, after a few days of testing the researcher was able to discover that Instagram’s rate limiting mechanism could be bypassed by rotating IP addresses (in other words, not using the same computer to brute force the recovery code) and sending concurrently from different IP addresses:
“Sending concurrent requests using multiple IPs allowed me to send a large number of requests without getting limited. The number of requests we can send is dependent on concurrency of reqs and the number of IPs we use. Also, I realized that the code expires in 10 minutes, it makes the attack even harder, therefore we need 1000s of IPs to perform the attack.”
Mutiyah says that he used 1000 different machines and IPs to achieve easy concurrency, and sent 200,000 requests in his tests. He shared a YouTube video with Facebook and Instagram’s security team to demonstrate the attack in action:
Of course, 200,000 requests isn’t quite the million requests that would be necessary to guarantee the correct recovery passcode would be entered to allow an Instagram account to be hijacked.
Mutiyah’s investigation concludes that in a real attack, 5000 IP addresses would be needed to hack an Instagram account. Although that sounds like a large number, it can actually be easily achieved at a low price (Mutiyah says there would be approximately US $150 cost if a cloud provider like Google or Amazon was used).
All Instagram users should be grateful that Laxman Muthiyah chose to responsibly disclose the security vulnerability to Instagram’s security team rather than monetize his discovery by selling it to online criminals.
It’s easy to imagine that a technique like this would be very attractive to many hackers interested in compromising Instagram accounts, and they might be prepared to pay much more than the $30,000 Muthiyah received in the form of a bug bounty.
All internet users are reminded to better secure their online accounts with strong, unique passwords and to enable two-factor authentication wherever possible.
What to do if someone tries to access your Facebook or Instagram
A notification pops up on the smartphone screen: "We detected an unusual login attempt from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
" The first reaction is panic, especially if you live in, say, Vladivostok. What could it be? System failure? Or is someone from the other side of the world really encroaching on your account?
There is no way to panic in such a situation - this will only play into the hands of the burglars. So that you can remain calm and survive this incident with minimal losses, we will arm you with knowledge: we tell you what the matter might be and how to act. nine0003
What could have happened
First, let's figure out how a stranger could gain access to your account at all. There are several options here.
Data leak and wildcard attack
A third party site where you registered might have been leaked. Having acquired a list of logins, e-mail addresses and passwords, scammers use them for a substitution attack, that is, they try to enter stolen credentials on many sites. Unfortunately, many people set the same passwords to protect their accounts in different services - this is what criminals are counting on.
nine0003
Alternatively, your Facebook or Instagram credentials may have been leaked from the app you trusted them to. For example, in June last year, thousands of passwords from Instagram accounts leaked to the network, the owners of which used the Social Captain service to buy likes and followers. It turned out that he did not encrypt customer data, and anyone could get access to it. It is reasonable to assume that many users of the service have since experienced hacking attempts.
Phishing
It may also be that some time ago you fell for phishing, and your login with a password fell into the hands of scammers directly. They clicked on some link, and on the page that opened, very similar to the Facebook or Instagram login screen, they entered their credentials. So they ended up with the criminal. For example, most recently, our experts discovered a phishing campaign in which victims were lured to phishing pages by the threat of blocking their Facebook account due to copyright infringement.
Password theft
Your password may have been stolen by malware you picked up somewhere. Many Trojans have a built-in keylogger, a program that registers keystrokes on the keyboard. All logins and passwords that the victim enters, the keylogger directly passes into the hands of attackers.
Access token stolen
Someone may have stolen your access token. So that you don't have to enter a password every time you log into Facebook or Instagram, it saves a small piece of information needed to log in to your computer, which is called a token or access token. If an attacker steals the current token, he will be able to log into the account without a username and password. nine0003
Tokens can be stolen in different ways. Sometimes this is done through vulnerabilities in Facebook itself - for example, in 2018, attackers were able to get access tokens to 50 million Facebook accounts. Also, attackers can use browser extensions to steal tokens.
Login from someone else's device
It's possible that you logged into Facebook or Instagram from someone else's device - at a party, in an Internet cafe, in a hotel lobby, and so on - and did not log out after that.
Or, for example, they forgot to log out of their account on a device that they had already sold or donated. Now someone has discovered your oversight and logged into your account. nine0003
False alarm (phishing again)
Your account may not have been hacked at all, but they are trying with a fake suspicious login notification. This is the same phishing that we talked about above, but a slightly different version of it. Instead of the threat of blocking, scammers can use fake suspicious login notifications with a link to phishing sites similar to the login page. Attackers expect that the victim in a panic will go to a fake site and enter their username and password there. nine0003
And what to do?
We have sorted out the possible causes, now it's time to act. To get started, log into your account - but in any case not through the link from the notification (as we already know, it can lead to a phishing site), but through the mobile application or by entering the address in the browser manually.
If the password does not match and you can no longer log into your account, refer to the detailed instructions on what to do if your account has already been hijacked, which we published earlier.
If you are still allowed into your account, go to your account settings and verify the authenticity of the notification. For each social network, the path to the desired settings item will be different - see how this is done on Facebook and Instagram. Then go to the “Account Logins” section: if there are no suspicious entries there, then everything is in order, and the message about the hack was still phishing. nine0003
If you really see a suspicious one in the list of logins to your account, then it's time to hurry up to take protective measures - timely actions will help soften the blow:
- Log out of your account on all devices. On Instagram, you will have to manually end each session in menu Account Logins . And on Facebook, this can be done with a single click in the Security and login section in the settings.
This will reset the access tokens. - Make sure that the correct phone number and email address are specified in the account settings: attackers could change the data so that the link or code to change the password is sent to them. If they managed to do this, change it back to yours. nine0052
- Set a new password that is strong and one that you don't use anywhere else. If you're not sure you can remember it, save it in a password manager. By the way, at the same time the program will help you come up with a reliable combination.
- Turn on two-factor authentication to make it harder for attackers to break into your accounts, even if they know your password.
- After that, be sure to check all your devices with a reliable antivirus to make sure that they are free of malware. Attention to security settings along with good protection will make your account your fortress. nine0052
Tips
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- I agree to provide my email address to AO Kaspersky Lab in order to receive notifications of new publications on the site. I can withdraw my consent at any time by clicking on the "unsubscribe" button at the end of any of the emails sent to me for the above reasons.
Hacking Instagram accounts through copyright infringement notices
Gained a few thousand followers on Instagram? Even more? Congratulations! You are a real celebrity! But in addition to laurels, well-known Insta bloggers have a greater risk of account theft. Not so long ago, scammers invented a new scheme to hijack popular Instagram accounts. We will tell about it now. nine0003
"Your account will be permanently deleted due to copyright infringement," the email reads.
It looks quite official: here you have both the official header and the Instagram logo, and the sender’s address is very similar to the real one – in most cases it is [email protected] or [email protected].
The notice gives you only 24 hours (48 hours in some versions) to file your appeal. In the letter itself, you will also find a button for appealing the complaint - Review complaint. If you click it, you will be taken to an extremely believable phishing page. nine0003
This page talks about how much the service cares about copyright protection. But the most important thing is that there is a link on the page, according to which you can allegedly appeal the deletion of your account. To make everything look even more natural, the page has a long list of language choices, but it's there only for show - whatever you choose, the page is displayed exclusively in English.
After clicking the link to appeal the deletion of your account, you will be prompted to enter your Instagram account information.
But that's not all - then a new message appears: "We need to authenticate your application and make sure that the email address matches the one specified in Instagram." If you agree to address verification, a list of possible domains will appear on the screen. Selecting one of them, you will see a prompt to enter an email address and (suddenly!) password from it. nine0003
You will then see a message for just a few seconds that your request is being processed, after which you will be redirected to the real Instagram site. This is another trick that adds credibility to the scam.
This is not the first time popular Instagram users have been targeted by scammers. Recently, a wave of thefts took place under the pretext of obtaining a blue checkmark - a verification badge (Verified Badge).
How to protect your Instagram account
As soon as your username and password are in the hands of attackers, they will gain access to your Instagram profile and be able to change data to recover it.
They can then demand a ransom to get the account back, or start sending spam and other malicious content from it. Not to mention what "open spaces" in front of them will open the password from your email. nine0003
Here are some tips to help keep your Instagram account safe:
- Don't click on suspicious links.
- Always check the URL in the address bar. If instead of Instagram.com something like 1stogram.com or instagram.security-settings.com is written there, in no case do not enter any personal data and generally close the page as soon as possible.
- Only use the official social network app installed from the official app store (eg Google Play for Android or App Store for iOS). nine0052
- Do not enter your Instagram account information to sign in to other services and applications.
- Turn on two-factor authentication in your Instagram and email service settings.
- Use reliable protection that will filter out suspicious emails and prevent you from opening phishing pages.
