How to Protect Your Instagram Account from Phishing and Scams?

Account protection and helping community keep their accounts secure is crucial to Instagram. That’s why the platform provided a range of tools to help users protecting their accounts from phishing and scams, and is continuing its efforts on a permanent basis to improve and update security features to ensure that society is kept safe and welcome.

Five basic steps to help keep your Instagram accounts secure:

Security Check: A new feature to help people keep their Instagram accounts safe. A security check will guide people whose accounts may have been compromised through the steps needed to secure them. This includes checking login activity, reviewing profile information, confirming accounts that share login information, and updating contact information for account recovery such as a phone number or email.

Enable two-factor authentication: Instagram highly recommends setting up two-factor authentication, a security feature that helps protect your account and password. Two-factor authentication means that you will receive a notification or be asked to enter a special login code when someone tries to log into your account from a device that is not recognized. Go to “Security” in your settings and enable it with just a few clicks, either using your phone number or an authentication app like Duo Mobile or Google Authentication.

Enable login requests: When you set up two-factor authentication on Instagram, you’ll get an alert when someone tries to log into your account from a device or browser that is not recognized. These alerts will tell you which device tried to sign in and where it is. You can approve or decline the request instantly from your devices that are already logged in. You can also view the list of devices that have recently logged into your Instagram account at any time through the “Settings” menu, then “Security”, and then “Login Activity”. If you don’t recognize recent login information, you can sign out of that site or device and tell Instagram that it wasn’t logged in by you.

Update your phone number and email: Make sure your email and phone numbers associated with your device are up to date. This way if something happens to your account, Instagram can reach you. These steps allow you to recover your account even if your information has been changed by a hacker.

Instagram will not send you a direct message: Over the past few months, Instagram has seen a rise in malicious accounts sending people via direct messages to try to access sensitive information like the account’s password. They may tell you that your account is at risk of being banned, that you are violating intellectual property policies, or that your photos are being shared elsewhere. These messages are often deceptive and violate company policies.

When these types of scams are detected, the company takes action against them, but they also encourage you to report the content and block the account.

Remember: Instagram will not send you a direct message. And if they ever want to reach you about your account, they’ll do that via the “Instagram emails” menu in your settings, which is the only place you’ll find a direct, real connection from them on the app.

Report suspicious content and accounts: While always improving its techniques to combat new trends and techniques that would be used by hackers and spam accounts, you can also report parts of content to Instagram by clicking on the three dots at the top of the post, either by message, or by visiting the account and reporting directly from the profile.

As part of ongoing efforts to raise awareness and encourage the use of Instagram security tools, Instagram has collaborated with content creators and influencers such as Khaled Mokhtar, Amr Maskon, Ali Othman, Mazan Yassin and Adel Al-Adawany to stimulate cross – platform interaction and dialogue on account safety, and to educate all users about the need to take action to protect themselves from fraud or hack attacks.