Instagram (which is owned by parent company Meta) announced that they are committed to fostering a safe and supportive community for everyone who uses Instagram. There are some easy things you can do to help keep your account safe, like making sure you have a strong password and enabling two-factor authentication.
Instagram has highlighted several new features designed to help keep people’s accounts safe, and offer them support if they lose account access.
Additional Account Support
To support accounts that are experiencing access issues or may have been hacked, Instagram created instagram.com/hacked – a new, comprehensive destination people can rely on to report and resolve account access issues.
If you are unable to log in to your account, enter instagram.com/hacked on your mobile phone or desktop browser. Next, you will be able to select if you think you’ve been hacked, forgot your password, lost access to two-factor authentication or if your account has been disabled. From there, you will be able to follow a series of steps to help regain your account.
Earlier this year, Instagram started testing a way for people to ask their friends to confirm their identity in order to regain access to their account, and this option is now available to everyone on Instagram. If you find yourself locked out of your account, you will be able to choose two of your Instagram friends to verify your identity and get back into your account.
Keeping Your Account Secure
Instagram is testing ways to help prevent hacking on Instagram before it happens. First, they remove accounts that their automated systems find to be malicious, including ones that impersonate others, which goes against our Community Guidelines. Second, because bad actors often don’t immediately use accounts maliciously, we’re now testing sending warnings if an account that we suspect may be impersonating someone requests to follow you.
Engadget reported that Instagram created a hub where people can go to report and resolve account access issues they’re having. Engadget noted that this could be hugely beneficial for hacked users who are struggling to regain access to their accounts.
In addition, Engadget reported that if you get locked out of an account, you can get two Instagram friends to verify your identity. This feature was tested out earlier this year and is now available to everyone. The two friends that you select to help verify you will have 24 hours to respond to the request. If they do, Instagram will let you reset your password.
In my opinion, these changes made by Instagram are a step in the right direction. According to The Verge, Instagram users whose Instagram accounts were stolen by hackers had to pay a ransom in order to get it back. Some had to turn to other hackers for help. It is good that Instagram is doing something to prevent that problem from happening.