Social Networking Safety. What I learned the Hard Way.

My Story When My Social Networking Safety was At Risk.

So my social networking safety was compromised last week when my Instagram got hacked. Here is how it all went down. Tuesday afternoon, I got an email with subject “Your Instagram password has been changed”. It said:
“This is a confirmation that the password for your Instagram account @alanna_girl_model_19yo has just been changed.”

So I’m like, I’m not @alanna_girl_model_19yo. I’m not gonna think much of this. There is was a link that said “If you didn’t create an Instagram account using this email address, let us know here” I clicked the link and In my head someone is using my email for a spam or something. Its not a big deal. Lesson number one: It is a big big deal. Red flags everywhere. Hide your kids, hide yo wife.

The next day my brother messaged me on Facebook and he informed me that my Instagram account name is now @alanna_girl_model_19yo. And asked me if I did it on purpose. I’m now starting to freak-out. Turns out someone got into my account and changed my username and password. Changed my bio and for some weird reason kept my website in the bio. Now I can’t login to my account. Its been completely hijacked.

So my Instagram username before this online heist was @hamzadaoui which is pretty much my full name. Now I need to contact the authorities. The authorities in this situation is Instagram, and to contact Instagram, you need an Instagram account. My workaround this problem is to login Instagram using Facebook, which automatically generated this username @hamzadaoui. Do you see what I’m going through here. I got my username back and lost the followers, the photos and the rest of the account. Not to mention how confusing this is going to be to explain to Instagram Support. And of course it was confusing the first two interactions. They first told me my account is intact and to just change my password if I think my account is being used by someone else. It took me 6 emails to explain that alanna_girl_model_19yo is not a real user. That this person is using my account, followers and content.

The next day Instagram emails me that I got my account back. To go ahead and change the password, and obviously get rid of off this username @alanna_girl_model_19yo. I had the option to change it back to my name @hamzadaoui but then I decided to go with my website’s name @brandnewdreams. Many articles in the web suggested to never use your full name as a username on social media which I believe was part of the problem. After this experience and after reading countless articles one social networking safety, I learned a few things which brings me to my next point.

Tips for Social Networking Safety

Here are some tips to a least protect yourself and improve your social networking safety:

• Use strong passwords.
• Refrain from using your full name as a username
• Be wary of publishing any identifying information about yourself – either in your profile or in your posts – such as phone numbers, pictures of your home, workplace or school, your address or birthday.
• Be selective about who you accept as a friend on a social network. Identity thieves might create fake profiles in order to get information from you.
• Assume that everything you put on a social networking site is permanent. Even if you can delete your account, anyone on the Internet can easily print photos or text or save images and videos to a computer.
• Use caution when you click links that you receive in messages from your friends on your social networks.
• Be careful about installing extras on your site. Many social networking sites allow you to download third-party applications that let you do more with your personal page. Criminals sometimes use these applications to steal your personal information.
• Ensure you have effective and updated antivirus/antispyware software and firewall running before you go online.

At the end, here is the most important lesson I learned.  There is no phone number to call when your account gets hacked. Its actually many confusing forms that you probably need to fill out a few times before you get your account back. Luckily for me when my account got hacked, they didn’t delete or post content. So it could have been a lot worse. So to avoid a terrible situation, do your best to protect yourself and if you see a red flag, act right away.

Resources:

• https://www.microsoft.com
• https://www.getsafeonline.org