‘I need your help’ Recognizing Hackers on Your Social Medias
Personal experience with the Dangers of Social Media
https://www.abc.net.au/everyday/how-to-keep-hackers-out-of-your-social-media-accounts/11524776
January 14, 2022
As many of us know, social media can be a very dangerous place. One of the dangers that come with it is hackers. The people who use their advanced technical skills to get into others’ private information
The platform where this can be very common is Instagram. It is a social media app that has over 1.3 billion people. People can freely receive direct messages from others, which can easily lead to hackers getting into their accounts.
You might think that you shouldn’t answer unknown accounts or block them, but hackers are much more advanced than this.
On Instagram, there has recently been a chain hacker going around. They can use someone else’s account and hack their mutuals, which are usually people that the account owner is familiar with. How I know this is that it recently happened to me.
I got the message “I need your help” at 4 am, answered it, and now I certainly learned from this. I believed that it was a friend who was struggling, so I chose to help them out. They needed my number (the first mistake I made) and asked me to send them the link they sent me (the second mistake I made), which eventually led to my account email and password being changed, so I couldn’t get back in.
After taking my account, they then direct messaged my mutuals, managing to take a couple of accounts. This causes a chain of accounts to be taken, which then leaves the hacker with many accounts and the freedom to do anything they want with them.
Luckily, after getting in contact with Instagram, I was able to get my account back within 24 hours. I do think now that it wasn’t smart to share my number with others over text, but I did write this as a warning. This is just to remind you to make rational decisions and watch out for the traps others set up on social media.
Feel free to leave a comment if you’ve ever experienced this.
Jayla Fleming • Feb 3, 2022 at 10:07 AM
Everybody that I follow is getting hacked, THese hackers are getting out of control. Social media platforms need to do better!!
Chiso Nwachukwu • Jan 31, 2022 at 1:29 PM
I don’t use social media like that so I have never experienced it, although I have done it to some people. I would myself call hacking tampering an account w/o consent from the owner. Since my father specializes in cyber security I grab a few tips from him and use it on proxy accounts to practice.
daniel odukoya • Jan 31, 2022 at 8:44 AM
I almost fell victim to the schemes of the hackers when a friend of mine requested I send my email so they can put me as a recommendation for their portfolio, only for my friend to call me before I was about to send my email that her work computer was hacked.
deshari johnson • Jan 27, 2022 at 1:56 PM
I had encounters where my mutuals on social media will send random links to me and then post soon after that they were hacked and should ignored, apologizing for the bother. Over time I got used to ignoring random dms from people with no explanation, but the first time this happened to me I thought it was just a regular dm from someone I’ve chatted with before. Opening it and was quickly overwhelmed by whatever was shown, I don’t recall well,and learned to not open random links after that. I change my passwords every few months just in case.
Jeniya Moore • Jan 27, 2022 at 1:25 PM
Glad you shared your experience. I know so many people who have been hacked and have not been able to get their accounts back. You would trust this easily because you think it is your friend or someone you know asking for help. We need to be a lot more careful with social media
Janiya Nwosu • Jan 27, 2022 at 9:52 AM
I am so happy that you wrote an article about this. I feel like most of the time people don’t realize their accounts have been hacked until it is too late. Thank you so much for talking about what you did to get rid of the hacker because most of the time most people feel like there is nothing that they can do when this happens. Thanks.
Ashley Chimi • Jan 25, 2022 at 1:30 PM
I think this article is extremely relevant right now, especially because there was a time when a lot of instagram accounts were being hacked due to this reason, so I think its good to be informed of this.
Chelsea Nnebedum • Jan 25, 2022 at 1:19 PM
This article is very informing! Hacking happens so often that sometimes we don’t even know when it occured. This is something that should be be shared more, especially since younger kids are starting to get on social media.
Makaiyah White • Jan 18, 2022 at 2:21 PM
I was hacked this way too and I wish an article like this was posted when it happened so hopefully it can help the next person.