How to get your Instagram account back from hackers (The 3:59, Ep. 572)

Welcome to the 3:59 I'm Roger Cheng. I'm Alfred Ng. Instagram is testing some new features that could make it harder for hackers to see your account and hold them for ransom. Alfred you have the story. What's this about? Yeah. So a lot of the times hackers will target you know Instagram accounts from influencers or anybody that has like a cool user name that's only like three letters long or something like that and sell it for like pretty high prices. In a report from the atlantic a few months ago we talked about how these accounts can often times sell for $100,000 or something like that. But I've also known average people who are not celebrities at all get their Instagram accounts hacked and it's extremely hard to get it back. Most of the time because when you ask to change, get your password back They'll send it to an email address. But the problem is once somebody has your email has your Instagram account, they can change what email addresses associated with. Right. And they'll hold it for ransom. Sometimes they'll say, if you want your account back, give us 100, $200, whatever. As that what it goes for? Because like, obviously first celebrity, if you don't count, it's worth a lot more but if it's just average Joe, like, How much is it actually. If it's like an average person it's about that much, you know, varies, if you have a really popular account, it could cost a lot more than that considering how much influencers make from advertise posts and things like that. But what Instagram is testing out is these features. So when you try to log in now if you can't get your password right, obviously because a hacker might have changed it. You can now ask them to. Send the 6 digit code to your original email address. So the one that you signed up for Instagram with. Yeah. which can't really change, Right. And they can send it there and once it goes there and use the 6 digit code to log log back on, they will log out all other log in session so that you know the hackers on their devices they'll be logged down they won't be able to get back in that way. Catch up. So. This is something that's been coming for a long time. People have been getting hacked on Instagram for a while now and they really haven't done much for victims but this is a good way to prevent that from happening. And how, I mean, how prevalent is this? How many of these, how common is it for you to actually get your account Hacked and held for ransom. Well there's no statistic on it but last August, Instagram did acknowledge in a post on their own blog saying like, "We've noticed a rise in this. We've noticed more people complaining about this." But they didn't really offer a solution then. They more so gave the standard fare of use a strong password and use two-factor authentification. RIght. Right.>> Which isn't really, you know, proactive on this kind of thing. Yeah. So yeah. Okay, all right. Well, it's good to hear that Instagram's actually, taking some proactive moves, to help users. Next up, are you familiar with World of Warcraft or Ever Chris quest? Yeah, I used to play a lot of Wow. And then I stopped because, I had other things to do. Well, these massive online, Role playing games. You know they were kind of the exception I guess. There were a couple of these, a handful of these games back in the day. But now it's completely become the norm. You've got games like Anthem. You've got games like Sea of Thieves, of course, Fortnite. These are games that expect to go on forever as opposed to the annual update of the franchise. Using relying on DLC relying on the ability to purchase digital goods or upgrades How do you feel about that? Because I feel like this is a this is just a way to bleed you your money more. Yeah, I mean they don't have to make a whole new game and it's, they save money that way. Also people get new content without having to buy it all straight up new game. Obviously there's like subscription fees associated with that. And they can just keep making money that way without as much for the work. All games, no matter how good they are, will stale and they'll make a new one eventually. Like Diablo II was supposed to last forever also and, Then they kinda got sale, and then they came out with Diablo III, which is also really good. Same thing with Dota, Dota is a game that lasted a really long time, and then they came out with Dota 2. I guess Destiny is a good example of that [UNKNOWN]. Destiny was supposed to go on for a while, and then, well, Destiny also didn't have the best start. Yeah, they all eventually get stale. When you think fornight and fornight ->> There's going to be a fortnight to it eventually. There's no doubt that there will be.>> All right Lastly, check out our latest tech enabled feature which is which gives you an inside look at a smart home custom built for wounded veterans. Special reminder that tech isn't just about the shiny new gadgets. Stuff can actually change lives in a real meaningful way. For more of these stories check us out on CNET I'm Roger Chang. > I'm Alfred Ang?. > Thanks for listening. [MUSIC]