Disclaimer: I have nothing against the Russians. In fact, I have Russian friends and one of the best thing I like about them is being brutally honest and upfront. They say things as it is. No sugarcoating. I would rather have friends like this than tupperwares.
Another thing I like about Russians is that men protect and take care of their women. Another off topic value and may indulge some more controversial talks. Let’s stick to how my Instagram got hacked and deleted.
Last March, I opened an email containing a collab for a clothing company. I get a lot of these and yes, some are scams and you would know right away. Most are just shops trying to make you buy from them and you pay for only shipping. Take note, the shipping cost as much as the product. Here is the email that I received.
I clicked on the link mindlessly. Alas, this is a phishing link. Once you hover on the link, it actually shows that the link is not connected to the site. Too late for me to notice. Then it asked me to log in my Instagram. It looked legit but I know this is one of those pay only shipping collab. I emailed back to ask which recent post of mine did they like to test if they actually checked my post. Sometimes marketing team write words to hook and clickbait.
Good night macaroon seem so legit that this being a black hacker is beyond me. They have many links in google that it is a fashion company. It could also be a legit company that scammers used.
Two days after, on a normal working day, I received this horrendous email.
Of course, I panicked because Instagram is my business. It took me years to get to 35K followers and I’m not even considered a big influencer. I have been using it as a portfolio for my creative work and for social media handling services.
When I checked it, I have been logged out. I could not log back in. Then I could not find my account anywhere. I used my common hashtags and I disappeared from the Instagram world.
The hacker emailed me again saying that I have to pay 265$ to get my account back. In my thoughts, I could pay 265$ right away but my ego is saying I can get my account back without paying them.
I did all the research I could do thinking I am very good at this. I read a bunch of forums, youtube etc.. There were forums that was made of getting back a hack account. Some say find your personal hashtags and see if the hackers have changed your username.
My common hashtags are #babetravelling and #beachreport. They still exist but my photos are nonexistent. In short, I failed.
The hackers said pay within 1 hour so I try to buy time by haggling. The price was now at 130$ which can easily be paid. My ego has been settled and I would want to pay 130$. I am getting ready to pay but they want me to pay in bitcoin through a link and not through paypal.
By this time, I’m so confused because what if it’s another hacked link and they get my bank account this time. Also, why is it 130$ only?
This is a failing situation but I am quite resourceful and up to the task of getting my Instagram back. Another thing I saw from forums is getting help from Instagram. Unfortunately, IG does not have that personal care customer service. They do things by mass problems. There is a mass problem about hacked accounts so they made a general link solving hacked accounts.
More or less, going to IG for help is useless unless you know someone from them. I did it anyways and followed the general link. I got a heartless robot response from IG shortly.
The next thing I did to get my hacked Instagram back is to contact white hackers. There are plenty of them in Youtube spamming comments. I was desperate so I contacted several and see which one would reply first.
Cyber_merger and robbie_hackaman9 bought ran away with my money. Aslynn_morghan has an attitude problem. I am so tired by this time so I went to my last resort and asked help from friends through Facebook. I received a lot of condolences and some DMs. One of them is from a friend who mentioned that two of his influencer friends got hacked.
He sent me an email that his friends got an email from ”@goodnightmacaroon” and clicked the link. I put two together and yes, I’ve been victimised by the same hackers. He gave me Juan, a white hacker to work on my instagram.
Defeated from the other white hackers, I went to ask help from Juan. Juan does not ask for your money until it is resolved. The end price is much more expensive.. I let him work at it and this took more than a month. Sometimes he takes awhile to reply but he does reply.
At the end of it, I was not able to retrieve my account. Juan said my Instagram was deleted and it could not be brought back. This was a very discouraging experience for me and I don’t want you to have the same fate. This is the reason why I’m sharing this.
I want you to take the next steps especially if your Instagram is very important to you:
- Change your password and make sure it is strong and difficult to hack.
- Have a two step verification.
- Don’t let an untrusted 3rd party have info of your account.
