• wasnt gonna post anymore topics but this has me baffled. so i know networking and security quite well but i admit this left me stumped

    so first off i NEVER have had an instagram account and dont care for it. i got an email saying someone from peru, a girl, logged into my instagram account USING MY EMAIL NAME ? it then showed the device used to do that as being a pixel phone. anyway, i went into instagram and saw it was some girl with her photos plastered all over like it was her own account. again i have NEVER signed up for IG! so anyway, i then got an email saying that girls user name login was now camilla boyd or some shit like that. it would not let me edit the login photo as the girls pic but i could edit all other account settings like friends followed and privacy/etc . what is most odd is , if this was a hack, why in the world not mess with the password? all i did was go right to "her" page with my email name and simply reset the account info and change the damn password. it let me! then i decided to just end it by going into IG and deactivating the account fully. it let me again! so was this even a damn hack? if it was, it was a rather pathetic job at it! why would you take my email as a user name and then allow me to change the damn password to whatever i wanted? it was odd i could edit everthing except the profile photo.

    so anyone have an idea as to what the fuck i had happen? the account is deauthed now. and i GUARANTEE they wont get that password. but did i just now screw someone from Perus login page now? i know shit about IG frankly. i didnt even sign up for the stupid thing! i know my shit hacking wise, but ill admit, this one has threw me for a loop!

    any ideas here?

    btw , all my other logins and email work fine, no issues


  • clueless about tech around here , apparently


  • It doesn't seem like a hack though. It was some girl who used your email address to create an account on Insta. I haven't used Insta but I've tried creating an account recently and it's login and account creation stuff works similar to facebook.
    IG uses phone number as well as email to create an account. Requires phone number verifo via OTP and email verifo via a confirmation email. Seems like a sound assumption to me that she verified her own phone number to sign up and handle the account.
    The puzzling stuff here is how was she able to verify the email? was your email account hacked to get it verified? Or was an email verification not a norm in those times when she created the account?
    And it's a mystery why she used your email ID to create an account in the first place. I'm inclined to guess that it might be typo. Still, sounds odd and unlikely.


  • @GreyWind why would it then let me change any of her account info or better yet change the pass and totally disable the account, like i did?


  • @mikeJB Social media accounts can be logged-in through email and phone number. I bet if you have the access to the email ID that's linked to the account, you can alter the settings in any way.
    I believe you must have accessed IG after opening that email you received and clicking the link in that mail. That way you could login to the insta account and make all of those changes which you were able to.
    I wanna state it again that all this doesn't seem some hacking stuff, though.


  • @mikeJB Hey, was the mail that you received, by any chance, a confirmation email from Insta?


  • @GreyWind yes from insta


  • @GreyWind it wasnt the full email though. not the @ part. just the username


  • @mikeJB Okay... When did you receive the email? and is there some way you can tell how old that ig account might have been?


  • @GreyWind i already deactivated the insta accnt. here is the exact email i got

    We Noticed a New Login, email address name

    We noticed a login from a device you don't usually use.
    Pixel 2 XL ยท Instagram ยท Lima, Peru

    May 27 at 12:02 PM (PDT)

    If this was you, you can safely disregard this email. If this wasn't you, you can secure your account here.

    Learn more about keeping your account secure.


  • @mikeJB Your email ID seems to have been associated with that IG account for quite a while. It's puzzling how the email got verified by ig in the first place. Either the account was quite old, ie. dating back to 2014 or even before that (email verification was adopted by ig in 2014); or someone got unauthorized access to your email and made verification, or however unlikely it might sound, it's still possible that you or someone close to you might have unintentionally verified it (it's just 2 clicks - one for opening the mail, the other for pressing the 'verify' button.)

    You might consider reaching out to ig support, but I'm not sure if it's possible since the account is no longer active.


  • I'm off to sleep now. btw I'm don't claim to be a techie lol