Attribution: scambusters.org

A Free Public Service

February 18, 2025

SCAMS BULLETIN Host Jay White is an inactive attorney in San Mateo County, California, USA.

It sounds hard to believe but an estimated 100,000 people have willingly given away their usernames and passwords in an Instagram scam.

Instagram is one of the big players in the latest craze for image-sharing social networking sites.

It’s believed owned by Facebook and has more than 150 million members, many of whom use it to legitimately share family, fun and friendship photos.

It’s also used legitimately by many celebrities and businesses to visually promote themselves.

Often, Instagram photos are cross-shared via other networks, like Facebook and Twitter.

And, just like most social networking sites, it relies on “likes” and other actions to spread connections, which makes it another ready-made target for scammers.

Internet security company Symantec reported two big Instagram scams towards the end of 2013.

In the first, an app that was available on most smartphones and other mobile devices promised to get users lots more followers.

In return, they had to provide their Instagram sign-on details, which, when you think about it, then gave the app maker the ability to log on to victims’ accounts and use them to fulfill its offer of following others — and do whatever else they wanted!

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