Sharing this snoop to warn everyone about an Instagram scam, hack. If you get a email saying you have been verified, qualified for a blue tick, the only email you need to look for that is legitimate is “security@mail.instagram.com”. Everything else is fake.

I got an email, the kicker not to my Instagram email, (something I wish I’d thought about) saying I had been verified and was now eligible for a blue tick, something I have applied for a few times in the past but never had a response or been awarded the verified badge.

My instinct was is this fake? so I looked at the email address the message had come from meta@verifiedbadgesform.com

The clever hackers had produced verifiedbadgesform.com to point to all the meta Instagram help support pages making me believe it was a real email.

So I clicked and went through the series of prompts.

Within minutes I had an email saying a random foreign gmail address had been added to

my account and within a few minutes more my account was disabled, Instagram had never heard of my user name, email or phone number.

When I tried to search my account from another Instagram account it was there but all my 6000 post history was missing.

I have subsequently gone through all the processes on the meta support website to attempt to recover my account which resulted in me receiving two numeric codes from Instagram with messages in English and Turkish (something that made me question again if I was in the middle of another hack)

I think not, as the final stage of the account recovery process was to submit a video selfie that scanned my whole face for the Instagram support team to determine the account is actually mine not the hackers.

Now according to half a dozen blogs I read in the subject I just have to wait.

One of two things will happen, I’ll get a login reset link to my Instagram email or I won’t. The time frame for this, anywhere between a few days and a few months.

Can I contact Instagram, the answer is no. I did find out I am not alone, 13% of all Instagram users in the US have been hacked.