“You have won a lottery of $10,000, click on this link to continue” Have you ever received any message like this in your Instagram DM requests with a link attached? Probably you did. But have you ever thought of what that link contained, whether you were really going to win the lottery or was it just a scam?
A plethora of people use Instagram making it the number one social media channel. It has over 180 million users in India only. Instagram has plenty of features that make it unique, be it sharing posts, stories with music and filters, following each other, or directly messaging one another.
And with its popularity, Instagram has also become the campsite for hackers. As anyone above 13 years of age can join the platform, it has become quite easy for hackers to lay out their traps and hack accounts.
Hacking Account By Saying Its A Copyright Issue
Hackers use multiple ways to hack someone and one of the rising ways of hacking the accounts is through sending malicious links with extravagant and engaging messages on Instagram DMs. These messages can be about any compromise of your account or copyright issue and have a link that appears to be from Instagram but actually isn’t. And once you click on the link your account is hacked.
Instagram itself had to issue a public notice regarding the “Copyright Help Center” scam where it asked users to beware of any message with any link that says it is from the copyright centre of the giant platform. And especially not to click on any links which come along with the message.
Hacking By Using The Lottery Method
Often hackers send a malicious link with hacking code to people on DM by saying they have a lottery and should claim it as soon as possible. There have been plenty of people complaining about this technique as they genuinely feel that they might have won any lottery but the second they open the link, their account gets hacked.
But it isn’t that simple, the link rarely has any code to get through the phone, and even if it did then the actual device hacked would be the phone, not the Instagram account. Thus Instagram realized that it is because people log in to their accounts through the link again.
But how do you do it, are there any apps or websites through which a hacker can send malicious links to Instagram users and hack their accounts?
This attack is not done through any website or app but by phishing.
Phishing Instagram Users Into Sharing Their Credentials
Hackers send a link along with their message to lure the users into their trap and extract sensitive information about their accounts.
In the “Copyright Help Center” scam, people were notified that if they didn’t follow the steps then their accounts will be banned from the social media platform and they won’t be able to make any new accounts. This led the users to follow the steps mentioned in the message, one of them logging into their account through the link.
The link opened a website very similar to that of Instagram and even had a two-factor authentication webpage that gave the hacker the password, username, and code for logging into the user’s profile.
Meanwhile in the “Lottery Method” people are asked to log in through the same fake Instagram account page to claim their reward. Users can’t see anything other than the login page and should log in to continue browsing their favourite application.
How To Protect Yourself
Amongst so many scams, one might ask, how can we protect ourselves? Well, there are quite easy methods to protect yourself and the first is to be vigilant and not fall for any suspicious-looking message. The next of which is to enable two-factor authentication.
Also, remember that Instagram never sends any messages or emails through the Direct Messages feature. If you ever receive any such message then make sure to go to Privacy>Emails, here you can see if Instagram has ever sent you any message regarding any violation that your profile has made.
There are several hackers out there who can gain profit by hacking accounts of normal people. They can use it as a bot for following accounts for money, ruining the life of the person by posting from their account, spreading malware, gain sensitive information about the person. But there aren’t many ways to protect oneself other than being technically sound and alert.