My other half discovered that some dodgy person/company had managed to send instagram messages advertising handbags to all of her followers from her account. She changed her password immediately, but what could have happened here? Is it the case that a “hacker” had access to her full instagram account, or would they have used some tool that allows posting of messages via some kind of proxy without requiring access to her actual account? There was no record of other logged in devices on the security page of her account.
Update: She’s just been through her junk email folder and found a “We’ve noticed a new login” email from instagram yesterday, so I presume that means they were fully in to the account then. How they got the password is anyone’s guess, but could be any of the suggestions below. Thanks all for the responses.
She’s just been through her junk email folder and found a “We’ve noticed a new login” email from instagram yesterday
The junk-ing security notices is so common.
A few months ago, my dad said “uh, I got some email from my bank, and now my credit card doesn’t work”.
The email was describing some problem with his account which would have been so much easy to fix before they cancelled the card.
Similarly, I lost a domain name because the registrar notifications for renewal ended up in my junk mail.It’s probably quite a significant issue. Companies can go “well we tried to contact you” and wash their hands.
Doesn’t matter that they also spammed bullshit marketing emails from the same address that issues security/renewal notifications.
Doesn’t matter that spam email has been such an issue it is near-impossible to host your own email server (and expect delivery) for a decade or so now.Meanwhile my main email account has started getting “WALMART.WIN.CONFIRMATION PLEASE REPLY TO LOCK IN YOUR NEW IPAD” emails from [email protected] (I mangled that email a bit but it’s close to accurate) about once a week. Just… in my main fuckin inbox.
It’s frustrating because it’s so obviously spam.
Most likely it was a password stuffing attack. If they used the same password on multiple sites, there is a good chance one of those other sites was compromised and the attackers took the compromised credentials and tried them on other sites like Instagram. It could have been something more advanced like a stolen cookie, but usually the simplest explanation is most likely.
Always use a different password for each service, enable MFA where possible, and use a password vault like Bitwarden.
yup, all mine are generated by bitwarden and look like this
^!i!MS11Ot4mTT
no reason to ever remember that. and with 2fa, good luck.
Huh, that’s a weird way to spell *******
Are the messages in her outbox? What some scammers do is they make a new account with the same name and profile picture, to then send messages that look like they’re from a friend.
I remember reading about an Facebook phishing thing going around, but that involved getting the password and then spamming out messages. She could try and remember if she got any weird links that she logged in with. Sometimes the scammer sends the harmful link to the followers, so the handbag site might be the problem link
None of the messages that were sent to people have appeared in the chat history for that person. Except there are two new chats in her messages to people that she doesn’t know, containing only the rogue message.
Interestingly, her entire chat history with me has been wiped.
Her account was likely compromised. It wouldn’t be possible to say how without more info. Could have been that her password was hacked (guessed), or could have been that her session was cookie hijacked where they wouldn’t have had to exploit the password.
I don’t know if IG has 2 factor authentication, but that could be something to look into. Also ensure the new password is not dictionary based. Use a password manager like bitwarden.
