Instagram account crackdown spreads panic, fear of hacking Distressed Instagram users locked out
On Saturday, the same day the Facebook-owned photo-sharing app enacted its revised terms or service, Yahoo Answers was inundated with threads from alarmed Instagram users who claimed to have lost access to their accounts for no apparent reason.
The longest question-and-answer thread, started by Yahoo user "moi," opened with an "Am I hacked?" query that soon had fellow forum participants worried that their security was compromised. Moi, like most of the other 57 people in the thread, was shown the following message, pictured below, when attempting to access the application this weekend:
Your account has been secured and requires account validation. Please login to Instagram.com from your desktop computer to validate your identify.
The desktop validation process then requires the user to upload a photograph of a government-issued photo ID by February 1 -- a puzzling requirement for many thread participants, who worried that a hacker was attempting to gain access to their personal information. Which is not the case.
"Instagram occasionally removes accounts due to violation of terms and, depending on the violation, may ask people to upload IDs for verification purposes," a Facebook spokesperson told CNET.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Don't know who would be dumb enough to actually do it.