I have an Instagram account with over 10k followers. I share random things, and I don’t have a niche. Am I the worst Instagram content creator? Probably. But that is not the point of this blog post.
Then why bring the stats of my Instagram account up? Because it is the opening for scammers to get into my email.
Every morning I take my cold brew and scroll through my emails on my computer. On this particular morning, I received an email from “Support Verification” with the subject line “Instagram account confirmation,” and a red flag went up in my head.
Usually, I would delete the email without opening it. But I wanted to see what the scammers were up to today.
Upon opening the email, I noticed that the email came from a michaelgriffith2163 at Gmail — I don’t need to tell you that Instagram would not use a Gmail account or random numbers in the email.
I will give these scammers props, though. The body of the email looks official. They even have the Meta logo and the Instagram corporate address at the end of the email.
I didn’t click the confirm profile link because that’s how they steal your Instagram data from you. From what I have heard, when you click the link, it leads you to a page to enter your Instagram username and password. After you do that, these scammers can hack your account with the password you provided, change your password, and steal whatever data you supplied to Instagram.
Long story short, don’t click random links in your emails.
Stay alert and don’t get scammed, Internet fam.
To read more about scams, read my blog post on Craigslist Rental Scams.