I’m still not sure exactly what this scam accomplishes, but my guess is maybe that is a real reset link meant just for me and they will use it to reset my password. And also, hopefully somebody will see this and not get scammed. And somewhere along the way, I decided to start screenshotting because it was just too good not to share. While I was doing all this, I did take the time to report his account to Instagram to alert them it had been hacked. These texts are just a small sampling of our conversation over the course of the day, where I pretended to get increasingly confused about how links work, how to cut and paste and how to follow basic instructions. This guy really really wanted me to send him that link! It’s too bad I never figured out how to make it work….lol. He sent me the link 12 times total before giving up! But then, I wouldn’t want to just drop my best friend like that, so I kept it going a bit longer. He’s really got perseverance, and I’m wondering if I should just tell him I’m never going to send him the link. By now I am really surprised he’s still chatting with me. We went back and forth several more times, with me being extra helpful and offering to click on his link for him, contact Instagram and ask them for help on his behalf, and have him send me the link a few more times just for shits and giggles. Let’s see how long we can keep this going! Even though I have never interacted with this person before and he apparently have over 2,000 other “friends” he can contact on Instagram. But unfortunately, I am the only one he can trust right now. Surprise! It didn’t work and he didn’t seem too happy about it. So at one point, I decided to send him a link I had found online just to see what would happen. I think he sent me the link 5 or 6 times all together. And somehow we have now become best friends! I decided to just keep us going in circles for a bit. By now we had gone back and forth a bit and he was getting desperate. I found it odd that it didn’t say anything about a text, only e-mail.īut that confirmed the Instagram account was most likely hacked, and this person was up to no good. What it said was the account was locked due to suspicious activity and they’d send a reset link to the e-mail. Out of curiosity, I went to Instagram and tried to log in under his username and pretend I forgot my password to see if it said he’d get a reset text. I scribbled out a bit on the link so nobody actually tried it or sends it to someone. That just seemed really weird, so of course I had no intention of actually doing it. The Instagram person wants me to forward them the link so they can verify their account. A quick Google search came up with dozens of reports of a phishing scam that starts with a text that says “Tap to reset your Instagram password” along with a link that starts with …and followed by a bunch of letters. I wasn’t entirely sure how they are sending the link to my phone, but you can be sure I wasn’t clicking on that thing. We kept this going for six hours over the course of the day, and it all started with this message: So then I got a suspicious reset link: Once I started, I felt a little invested in seeing how long I could stretch it out! (** If you fell for this scam, you can scroll to the bottom for info on getting your account back!) Normally I wouldn’t bother with answering back, but I was at the gym and peddling away on the recumbent bike, so I thought it might be entertaining to see how long I could string the scammer along and see if they got frustrated. They sent me a link that said, “Tap here to reset your password,” and wanted me to forward it to them. I got a weird message from someone I don’t know on Instagram this morning, saying they needed help getting back into their account.
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