It pains me to spend another moment of time on the story of my hack on Instagram. But I’ve heard from so many of you that I knew it was time for another update.
Long story short – on April 7th, I was hacked. My efforts of working with horrible people to get the account back resulted in a loss of time, money, and an overall feeling of helplessness. Surely there had to be a legitimate way to get my account back.
After hundreds of people (including me) reported the account as impersonating someone else, and the hacker started to post stories and directly contact my followers, I decided to just start anew. Here’s that saga.
I was able to get about 1,000 people to unfollow _dallaswinechick. The “_” was the new addition from the hacker. What was interesting is that my content came to an abrupt halt a little over two months ago. The account started posting crypto stories (in bad English to add insult to injury) and I began to direct message people. Should have been a red flag.
You think Instagram would recognize something was amiss? Nope, Instagram shut down my authentic account. Sadly, it becomes the victim’s responsibility to find people to help at Instagram. In a Consumer Reports article in May, it looks like I’m going to have few options.
In that article, they quote Dan Guido, the CEO of security firm Trail of Bits, “Instagram has been notoriously uncooperative when people lose access to their accounts, and insensitive that many people have business revenue that depends on them.” Now I have no revenue from this blog, but I don’t like someone bad having access to you guys using my name.
While it was my fault to click on that link, there should have been a way for Instagram to help solve the issue. I’ve worked in marketing for almost 30 years. I feel like I have a strong network – especially in technology – and I do have about 90,000 of you who read my blog monthly. But I’ve been unable to locate an actual human at Instagram who would help me. I am stuck in the land of “artificial intelligence algorithms” seemingly put together by a circus animal (no offense to circus animals). If you know someone, I’d love a way in.
For your own safety, I would recommend that you unfollow and click on no content that is published as I’ve been blocked and have no access to that account – unless you are really interested in crypto and being scammed. I wish I had another option to get the account back, but I invite you to follow me @dallaswinechick on Twitter and Facebook.
And I’ll continue to keep you posted on the continued saga of the Dallas Wine Chick on Instagram. Instagram, anyone … anyone?
Please note I am not looking for anyone to “help me fix my account.” That ship has sailed unless you work for Instagram.