As some of you might already have noticed, WatchTime’s Instagram account got hacked last week. Unfortunately, attacks on Instagram users, while rarer than other forms of cyber crime, are becoming increasingly common (and sophisticated), and not only high-profiles celebs have recently come under attack. In short, we were not the first nor will we be the last victim of hackers targeting Instagram, and with more than 270,000 followers, one can easily see why we were targeted in the first place. The good news is that we were able to successfully initiate the painfully slow and difficult process of recovering our hacked account. We’ve obviously also beefed up security (you’ll find Instagram’s safety recommendations here), and have worked hard to to limit the damages done to the account (like restoring deleted posts, cleaning up the profile, etc.). Nevertheless, we’ve lost around 3,000 (rightfully irritated) followers due to the hack, and we are still trying to figure out how the perpetrator was able to hack into the account.
Unfortunately, the story doesn’t end here. It appears that the hacker was able to exploit a weak link between Instagram and Facebook, Instagram’s parent company: While in full control, he created a fake profile page on Facebook using WatchTime’s (publicly available) email address and phone number. He then linked the fake Facebook profile page to WatchTime’s official Instagram accoun...