Beware Lupus Advocates of Phishing

Being an advocate, you must watch out for a lot of things. Let me teach you one. Now you have modern-day phishing, and it is so bad because of the pandemic, they are out there like a pack of wolves.

My advocacy platform was hacked

My Instagram was hacked in February and let me tell you it was a disturbing feeling to have someone come and invade your privacy and change everything to where you cannot even access your account. It is uncomfortable. I received a message "supposedly" from Instagram saying that I invaded someone’s privacy rights which I know I did not because my Instagram name is my brand name. In my eyes, I should have known better, but I did not at the time. When I opened that message, in less than 30 seconds, I lost my Instagram page.

Steps to getting my account back

So, I decided to go on my husband’s Instagram page and message my page and they messaged me back. They would say that they would give me my Instagram back if I gave them my email. But why? Why would they need your email to give your Instagram back? THEY DO NOT! The first thing they are trying to do is get access to your email account so they can delete any proof of you even having that Instagram or social media platform. Seconds passed, and my story post was deleted, my profile picture was changed, my bio was changed, privacy notification was changed, 2-step notification was turned off, and language and location had been changed to Turkey. Long story short, he was not trying to give me my page back. They even unfriended my husband on my page. They were pretending to be Instagram and if your page is verified, that gives you leverage... sort of.

It went on for days

For days, they would try to log in and the code to log in was still being sent to me. This also disturbed me because there was no way I could get into my page at all from my phone number. Do not ever trust anything that is not verified. Which sometimes can be hard, you guys, because it's not like you can call Facebook or Instagram to just hurry up and get access back to your things. Let me tell you one thing not to do. DO NOT EVER PAY a hacker. They are lying, they are never even looking forward back to getting you your page they just want to keep taking your money and get your help to take others. Do not provide a picture saying you got your page back before you even get it back. Basically, DO NOT give a hacker a time of day. There is a way to get your page back, it would just be an extremely long process. Secondly, be careful because that hacker might just hack you.

They might tell you to purchase their protection plan. Do not do it. They might tell you that the person might have gotten access to your bank accounts and everything through your phone and until you see that proof, do not do it. Call your bank and put your account in fraud claims and freeze your account and let it become investigated. My bank blocks all suspicious transactions on websites and places I have not been. They even call you because they are aware of scams. Trust me, I lost some money trying to get my page back in a blink of an eye. If you have a business through your social media, it makes an impact on your financial situation, promotions, advocacy videos, and more. So just be careful.