How to report a hacked Instagram account – an online safety tip

Having a social media account hacked is more than stressful. Recently a friend of mine who is considered  to be a social media influencer working with fashion and beauty brands, reached out to me as her Instagram account had been hacked. She asked if I knew how to report a hacked account.

Here is the information I shared with her – this approach works as at August 2017 and we are now awaiting to hear from Instagram is she can recover her account.

Actions to take if you think your Instagram account has been hacked and you are still able to log in:

If your account is posting content you have not authorised such as posts or comments, your pass work may have been compromised. You can change your password or you can send yourself an email to change your password.

Instagram also recommends that you should revoke access to any suspicious third party apps here.

Instagram also recommend that you turn on two factor authentication.

Actions to take if you think your Instagram account has been hacked and you are NOT able to log in:

If you can’t access your account, you may be able to get additional help through the Instagram app – open the Instagram app on your mobile device and on the login screen, tap ‘Get help signing in’ below ‘Log In’.

Instagram provides some other suggestions on this Help Page.

You may also find this link of assistance where you can contact Instagram to report a hacked account – see the screen shot below where you will see it is the last item is to report a hacked account.

You will find some additional security tips to protect your Instagram account on the bottom of this Help page.

And this article may also be of assistance in the future as the author seems to report updates on how to report a hacked account should the link to contact Instagram directly no longer work.

If you have questions about managing your processes for social media marketing and social business from developing and communicating your social media guidelines through to educating your team in social video and content marketing creation, you can schedule a conversation with me to discuss your questions.

UPDATE: Deleted, Disabled And Deactivated Instagram Accounts

The following resources were added on 24 January 2018.

I recently recieved a question from someone who mentioned they had accidentally deleted ther Instagram account and wondered if it could be recovered.

Instagram advises that after you delete your account, you can not sign up again with the same username or add that username to another account, and we can not reactivate deleted accounts.

When you delete your account, your profile, photos, videos, comments, likes and followers will be permanently removed. If you’d just like to take a break, you can temporarily disable your account instead. Your profile, photos, comments and likes will be hidden until you reactivate it by logging back in.

However if your account was deactivated for not following Instagram’s Community Guidelines and you believe this was a mistake you can appeal here.

The following information was added on 20 March 2018:

A reader of this article mentioned that they had a problem accessing information through the email address used on their Instagram account – this help page from Instagram about what to do if you can not access the email you registered your account with.