One minute I was in my garage, recording a behind-the-scenes video on Instagram stories, and the next minute, IG had kicked me out. I was irritated when I couldn't get back in. But when I went upstairs and saw all my passwords had been changed (bypassing two factor authentication), I was terrified.
In this very short podcast episode, I share my story of being hacked, the stories of 3 other victims (and why one is suing Facebook), how you can protect yourself, and my plan as I prepared to re-launch on Instagram.
Listen Now (Full Text Below)
Update One Year Later:
About 8 weeks after I published this episode, I also published this one:
4 Things I Lost, 8 Things I Gained, and How YOU Can Benefit From My Hack
I was also interviewed about Facebook/Instagram security in this episode of the Eat Capture Share Podcast with Kimberly Espinel:
#53 What's Happening With Instagram
More Personal Posts/Episodes
Full Text (Edited)
[00:00:00] Well, good morning for me, maybe it's good afternoon or good evening to you.
[00:00:16] I am getting closer to either having my Instagram account reinstated or much more likely having to start fresh with a new one. In the meantime, I wanted to let you know a little bit more about this hack that I've experienced, what I've learned so far, and hopefully maybe even a couple things that could help you and me in the future, maybe not be in a situation like this.
[00:00:50] Unfortunately, hackers are good. They're motivated. They know what they're doing. And as you'll hear as I talk about this more, I'm not so sure any of us are ever completely safe. But let's see what we can do.
[00:01:03] So I'm going to start sharing about this experience, actually, from my brother-in-law's perspective. It was what he saw that gave me the clue into what was happening with me and allowed me to do all the helpful research that I've done over the last week or so.
[00:01:19] About 2:45pm last Monday, July 14th, he happened to be on Facebook. He got a notification that my profile picture had changed. So he clicked on it and he saw that my profile picture had been changed to a black flag with white markings on it.
[00:01:40] He didn't recognize this image, so he did a reverse Google look up and saw that it was the ISIS flag. So he switched back to Facebook to let me know. And by that time, my account had already been disabled.
[00:01:57] From my perspective, I knew nothing of this. I didn't even hear that from him until 24 hours later, from my perspective, I was actually in my garage. I was having a great time. I was getting ready to do a shoot. Marcus, my 13 year old who has been doing my behind the scenes videos, was getting set up. I had just published a different Instagram TV video that morning, all about using light in food photography. I was getting a lot of reactions. I was interacting with those. And just as I got ready to take a selfie with Marcus, my 13 year old, I, I couldn't I couldn't take the selfie because I wasn't on Instagram anymore. It actually reverted me to a different account. And I'll tell you in a minute why that account was not disabled.
[00:02:47] When I tried to get back in to my Storied Recipe podcast account, I got a message that said, "Your Facebook and Instagram accounts have been disabled because you violated community standards on Facebook. If you think this was an error, you can appeal the decision."
[00:03:08] Interestingly, I tried to take a screenshot of this message just so that I knew already this was a big deal, just so I could have a trail of what happened moving forward.
[00:03:21] And I actually wasn't even allowed to take a screenshot of that notification from Facebook. They blocked me from doing that. A little message popped up on the bottom of my screen saying, you cannot screenshot this screen due to security concerns, which is amazing to me that I wasn't allowed to take a record of a decision that had been made a...
