Instagram account disabled for “violating our terms”…or out of spite?
My Instagram account has been the sustained target of bad actors trying to get access. When I last regained control of the account, I tried to prevent it from happening again. Since Instagram’s forgotten password routine gives rather a large hint about the email used, I generated an unguessable one. I also converted the account to a business account and linked it to a Facebook Page. Despite the continued activity of people trying to get into the account, everything stayed secure for a couple of years. Until now.
Uh-oh here we go again
Yesterday, I tried to log into the account on my phone and was greeted by this:
So it looks like the account has been flagged for pretending to be someone else. I have no idea how that claim could be viewed as legitimate and here’s my take.
Pretending to be someone via my posts?
Since the account was stolen, I haven’t posted much — I wanted to be confident the account wasn’t going to be wiped again before re-investing time into my profile. Since the account is now suspended, I can’t see the latest version but looking at a cached version of my posts it looks like I’ve only posted 6 times. I do follow a few accounts I check in with every couple of days. I interact with their content (like/comment etc) so the account definitely wasn’t dormant. Five of my pos-hack posts were reposts of things like when Stan Lee died or a cool Boston Dynamics video. On all the reposts I added my own comment and credited the original source. This can be seen in the following image:
So, I don’t see how anything I’ve posted can be construed as “pretending to be someone else”.
Pretending to be someone via profile content?
I can’t show you what my complete profile looked like because I can’t get a cached version. However, I think there’s enough evidence on the above screenshot and elsewhere on the web to suggest that:
- I only used my legal name on the account
- I didn’t try to pass myself off as anyone else in the bio. I can’t remember precisely what I wrote but it was roughly something like this:
“Under siege. @instagram #help (a/c NOT for sale)”
I accept that not having a photo of myself isn’t great but its not uncommon for avatars on social media to be things other than a user’s face. In case you’re wondering about my choice: when I set the profile pictures for my social media accounts I was looking for a quick-fix and David Niven screwing up his eye seemed to hit the spot. Notes: he’s been dead nearly 40 years and that previous sentence is the first time I’ve mentioned his name on social media. I use the same picture on Twitter, Medium and anywhere else I have the same handle.
So what happened?
Short answer; I have no idea! but…here are my best guesses:
Option 1: Someone has created a social media profile using an email address that was used on the account. That social media account is in arabic so I can’t fully understand it but using that they must have convinced Facebook that they “owned” something (my name/the handle?) on my account.
Option 2: The account was hacked and posted content pretending to be someone else. I don’t see evidence of a hack (emails, caches etc) but it’s possible. Instagram didn’t provide any detail of the complaint so I have no idea.
Option 3: Someone just didn’t like me owning the domain name (or not selling it to them) so they tried to get it shut down out of spite. I’m not sure how they can have been successful (surely they needed significant proof before IG took action?).
What have Instagram/Facebook done?
I followed the links on the help page and submitted scans of my drivers’ licence and passport. I was contacted pretty quickly (an hour or two) by a Facebook employee (Jeremy). Oddly, although I submitted the form in English, the support email was in French (Gmail translate FTW!). I’ve had fraudulent Instagram password reset notifications in French and Arabic so I guess my support request was filtered based on those instead of the fact that I access the account from the UK, have always interacted on the account in English and the account language is English.
Jeremy asked for a photo of me holding my ID…although it was late, I used my MBP’s webcam and sent one over. I also provided the correct (unguessable) email address that was on the account, the email address that was first used to register the account and another previous email address. All of which can be used to validate that I am the legitimate owner of the account.
I then received a note from Jeremy saying that I hadn’t provided the information that was on the account so I couldn’t have access restored.
Final thoughts
It seems incredible that an Instagram account can be suspended without any kind of contact, discussion or evidence. I want to build businesses on IG but if people can shut you down without any meaningful evidence it seems like a fool’s errand.
This is an account which has been stolen in the past, has a high volume of fraudulent password reset requests and almost daily offers to buy the account. I have tried to get Instagram Engineering to look at the way the account is being attacked but can’t get a response. I have screenshots and lots of email which might help understand what’s happening so if you know someone who works at Facebook/Instagram please ask them to reach out to me, I’d love to help prevent this happening to others.
