[rd]

This happened to my instagram yesterday night while I was asleep. I don't have a particularly high value username (it's probably worth somewhere in between $300-500), but still incredibly frustrating to deal with. True to the article, I had already enabled 2FA last night and it didn't matter.

Thankfully, IG gave me the option of restoring my username when I logged back into my account today.

[stephbook]

> Thankfully, IG gave me the option of restoring my username when I logged back into my account today.

The hackers read all your formerly private messages, saw all your private photos, saw all the photos your friends wanted only their social circle to see. They could have social-engineered a thousand scamss.

I'm glad it worked out for you. But honestly, your baseline is kind of off.

[parable]

While I agree with this, the hackers have an incentive to get in and out as soon as possible (at least, with accounts that have valuable usernames), because they want to swap the username over to an account they fully control before the rightful owner takes the account back. While DMs were read during this exploit in some cases (I've seen this be the case for several musicians), valuable usernames were likely signed into, swapped, and then signed out of. That's how rare username theft on Instagram generally works, anyways.

[rd]

I don’t use this account as a personal account. It has 0 followers. It’s solely used for design inspiration.