The concept of blue tick accounts was started by Twitter way back in the day, and it basically was a badge of honor for a lot of people. The main purpose of this account was to make it so that notable users and the like could figure out a way to make their own account stand out among a sea of copycats, but over the years it transformed into an elite club of sorts that everyone wants to end up joining at some point or another.
Other social media platforms such as Instagram started offering blue ticks as well because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up enticing more users to check out their platforms in the first place. However, the value of blue tick accounts has also ended up making them rather susceptible to things like malicious actors who would want to try and attempt to gain illicit access to said account. A lot of scams are going around that involve this sort of thing, and a would be victim of the scam by the name of Peter Slattery decided to dive in and see what was really going on.
The way that these scams work is pretty similar. You would basically get a direct message from someone or the other that would claim to be from Instagram, and they would be telling you that your account is in violation of copyright regulations or something similar to this sort of thing. You would be given a form that you would need to fill out to ostensibly avoid the rather severe penalty of having your account deleted permanently, but the thing to note here is that when you fill this form out your account would end up getting taken over by the malicious actor that was trying to scam you in the first place.
This is essentially a phishing attack. These malicious actors are trying to get people to put in their log in details so that their accounts can be stolen. While you might think that you would never fall for such a thing, a recent development is that these messages have started coming from blue tick accounts which lends them a lot more credibility and would make it far more likely that more people would start to fall for these scams.
Basically, a blue tick account owner that fell for this scam lost access to their account, and this account was subsequently used to target other blue tick account holders. Slattery waited for twenty four hours, which was the deadline he was given by the scammers before his account was supposedly going to be deleted, and then messaged them asking why his account was still active.
This lead to him receiving all sorts of messages, with some trying to argue that he had been given a final extension for the deadline, others accepting defeat and telling him that his account was no longer in violation of any policies, and others still acknowledging the scam but then trying to buy his account off of him.
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that Instagram is never going to delete your entire account because of one thing that you did. Rather, the social media platform would delete the offending post and give you a chance to respond through an official form. Direct messages are never a part of this process, so you should be wary if you receive any messages like this since accounts get sold on the dark web all the time and blue tick accounts in particular are quite valuable which makes them a frequent target for such scammers and the like.
Photo: Getty Images
Read next: This CEO Cracks Down On Spam Emails And Scammers Via Hilarious Set Of Automated Messages
Other social media platforms such as Instagram started offering blue ticks as well because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up enticing more users to check out their platforms in the first place. However, the value of blue tick accounts has also ended up making them rather susceptible to things like malicious actors who would want to try and attempt to gain illicit access to said account. A lot of scams are going around that involve this sort of thing, and a would be victim of the scam by the name of Peter Slattery decided to dive in and see what was really going on.
Pretty wild: I’ve been regularly getting messages from clearly fake accounts impersonating @InstagramComms etc, but this latest one is from a ~verified~ account.
— Peter Slattery (@PeterSlattery3) October 15, 2020
When I report these accts, I immediately get a msg saying they don’t violate any guidelines
What gives, @instagram? pic.twitter.com/D29hpRsikl
The way that these scams work is pretty similar. You would basically get a direct message from someone or the other that would claim to be from Instagram, and they would be telling you that your account is in violation of copyright regulations or something similar to this sort of thing. You would be given a form that you would need to fill out to ostensibly avoid the rather severe penalty of having your account deleted permanently, but the thing to note here is that when you fill this form out your account would end up getting taken over by the malicious actor that was trying to scam you in the first place.
This is essentially a phishing attack. These malicious actors are trying to get people to put in their log in details so that their accounts can be stolen. While you might think that you would never fall for such a thing, a recent development is that these messages have started coming from blue tick accounts which lends them a lot more credibility and would make it far more likely that more people would start to fall for these scams.
Basically, a blue tick account owner that fell for this scam lost access to their account, and this account was subsequently used to target other blue tick account holders. Slattery waited for twenty four hours, which was the deadline he was given by the scammers before his account was supposedly going to be deleted, and then messaged them asking why his account was still active.
This lead to him receiving all sorts of messages, with some trying to argue that he had been given a final extension for the deadline, others accepting defeat and telling him that his account was no longer in violation of any policies, and others still acknowledging the scam but then trying to buy his account off of him.
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that Instagram is never going to delete your entire account because of one thing that you did. Rather, the social media platform would delete the offending post and give you a chance to respond through an official form. Direct messages are never a part of this process, so you should be wary if you receive any messages like this since accounts get sold on the dark web all the time and blue tick accounts in particular are quite valuable which makes them a frequent target for such scammers and the like.
Photo: Getty Images
Read next: This CEO Cracks Down On Spam Emails And Scammers Via Hilarious Set Of Automated Messages
