From the rise in romance fraud in the run-up to Valentine’s Day to the increase in texting scams reported during lockdown, it can be hard to keep up with all the tactics being used by fraudsters online – especially as the operations they’re leading become more and more complex.

This is the case with a new scam currently unfolding on Instagram, which sees fraudsters ‘hijack’ people’s accounts and blackmail them into promoting a false investment opportunity to scam their friends and family out of thousands of pounds – only to steal the cash once it’s in their possession.

It’s the kind of wild scheme that’s hard to wrap your head around – but for 27-year-old Charlotte Forth*, it’s an all-too-familiar story. Just last month, her account was hacked by an unknown fraudster – and despite reporting the breach to Instagram, the hacker was able to take control. 

“After a couple of hours of nothing happening, I began receiving WhatsApp messages from an unknown international number to the number attached to my account,” she tells Stylist.

“The person greeted me with a bizarre jovial tone, and asked me to send them money for a bitcoin investment in order to get my account back. Obviously, I refused – but then they told me I had to send a video of myself encouraging people to join the investment scheme, or they’d delete all my content.”

Unfortunately, Forth had recently lost her laptop, the place where she stores the images and videos she posts on Instagram, meaning she had no back-up for the content on her account. So in order to save the content on her account – much of which she describes as “sentimental” – she made the difficult decision to give into the hacker’s demands.  

“I filmed the video, and while it seemed to disappear into the ether at first, some hours later it finally appeared on my Instagram stories and feed, alongside some posts claiming that I’d made lots of money from the investment and directing people to follow another account (which they’d tagged) for more information.

“They were also actively messaging friends, family and ex colleagues from my account in an attempt to engage them in conversation – and kept messaging me demands for money to stop posting on my account.”

Luckily for Forth, her friends and family noticed that this was a scam, because the hacker’s spelling and grammar was “atrocious”, and it was uncharacteristic for her to engage in bitcoin in the first place. No money was given to the hacker, and she was eventually able to get her account back by confirming her identity via a video she sent to Instagram. 

“That was probably the most frustrating part,” she adds. “There was obviously suspicious activity on my account (including eight logins from a foreign country and multiple instances of the phone number and email address being changed on the account), but it took 18 hours for me to regain control.

“I can only describe the whole experience as bizarre – I do find it kind of funny in a dark way, but it also left me feeling outraged and exhausted (thanks in no small part to how many times I had to explain what happened in the days after).”

While Forth’s experience is pretty bizarre, it’s not an isolated incident. Just last month, BBC Radio 4 revealed how one woman had lost £1,200 to a scammer who had hacked her friend’s account – and reports of a new ‘iPhone 13’ scam circulating the platform have emerged over recent days. 

It’s a worrying trend – but one which Meta (the company that owns Instagram) says it is taking action against. 

The company confirmed to Stylist that it has over 40,000 people working on safety and security on the platform, including over 15,000 dedicated content reviewers – and that it uses a combination of detection technology and community reports to find and remove content. 

Meta also issued the following tips to help people keep their accounts safe from hackers: 

Set up two-factor authentication: This security feature requires you to provide a unique code and your password to log into your account — and you’ll get an alert if someone tries to login to your account from a device we don’t recognise. Set this up by tapping on Settings > Security.

Enable login request: When you’ve set up two-factor authentication, you’ll get an alert if anyone tries to log into your account from a different device. By turning on login request, you can approve or deny those login requests. You can also view the list of devices that have recently logged into your account and log out of old or unfamiliar devices.

Update your phone number and email: Make sure the email address and phone number linked to your device are up to date so that if something happens to your account, we can help you recover it.

Report content and accounts you find questionable: Report individual pieces of content to Instagram by tapping the three dots above a post, holding on a message, or by visiting an account and reporting directly from the profile.

Never respond to a DM sent by an account claiming to be Instagram: Instagram will never send you a DM. If we want to reach you, it will be through the Emails from Instagram tab in Settings > Security, which is the only place you will find direct and authentic communication on the app. Anything else could be a scam. 

More information on Instagram scams – including how to report scams – can be found on the Instagram website. 

*name has been changed

Images: Getty