Published 25 minutes ago
Submitted by NortonLifeLock
NortonLifeLock Blog | Corporate Responsibility
By Eva Velasquez | President/CEO, Identity Theft Resource Center
Identity theft involving social media has been around for a long time. Sharing too much information online can put you at risk of a social media scam and scammers can commit these scams in many different ways.
One thing on the rise is hacked Instagram accounts.
As the President and CEO of The Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC), a leader in identity theft prevention and providing victim services, we have seen many social media scams involving hacked Instagram accounts. In September 2021, we received four times the number of inquiries regarding hacked Instagram accounts than in a typical month and we then saw an 80% increase in inquiries regarding Instagram account takeover from October to November 2021. January reporting saw the same number of inquiries as November; this is clearly an increasing trend.
How do Hackers Hack Instagram?
One tactic a scammer uses is impersonating people their victims know and getting their personally identifiable information. Some victims are finding themselves locked out of their Instagram account, and scammers are posting things in hopes of scamming other people.
Some victims report they did not give their information to a scammer, and they still had a hacked Instagram account or suffered an account takeover. While it appears people are being targeted in multiple ways to get login…
