18 May My 13 Year Old’s Worst Fear, Phishing, and Instagram’s Privacy Policy

My wife braved a Spring Break road trip to Chicago with our 11 and 13 y/o sons. Each of them could take a friend. It’s amazing that 4 middle school aged kids can come up with their own social media strategies to acquire more followers, get one of their accounts hacked / stolen, and get it all back with some sweating.

One of their strategies was simply elegant. Follow more PRIVATE Instagram accounts and the user would be notified of their request and be more prone to follow them back. Pretty interesting. It works although I am not sure of their criteria of picking the private accounts to follow.  Their logic was that just following a regular account, is less likely to get that follow-back.  I’d tend to agree.

The second strategy, was troublesome and went bad. On that long 10 hour road trip to Chicago, they took the short road to gaining followers and although I have not gotten the full summary of what they did, they probably fell prey to being phished for their password.

It probably happened pretty simply, in my guess.

1. They read an ad or a Google search somewhere that promised them 1,000 followers by next week.
2. They go to a landing page or download a rogue app that makes them enter their Instagram password and username
3. The “Phishers” grab that, login to their account, change the email address, username and the password… BAM.  Stolen account.
4. THEN the Phishers can use those accounts collectively to ask followers to follow a certain account, which eventually allows them to charge money for followers.

My 13 year old was too embarrassed to tell me this probably.  And he just went ahead and started a new account.

But when I went to check in on his account a little after April 20 (420), and saw a young man in his mid teens smoking a big joint, I personally was a little ticked off that someone would “steal” from him and immediately got the story from my son.  He never admitted to filling out forms to get more visitors.

Here’s what you must know if YOU have a child on Instagram.

• Instagram is MEANT to be for those users 13 and older.  They refer to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act as far as the data they collect and presume that those under 13 have the permission of their parents to use the platform. 
  • When I emailed support@instagram.com, stating that my son had his account stolen, they let me know that since he was 13, he’d have to start the inquiry himself and that they could NOT give me information due to the possibility of his data being sensitive.  Can you imagine?  But just like this age group can go into a physician and tell the doctor NOT to inform their parents of medical conditions, they have the right to the same privacy online.
• Instagram’s Process if you or your child gets their account stolen:
  • Go here (https://help.instagram.com/149494825257596) if you believe that your account has been stolen.
• YES… The process works.
  • It took some time, but my son provided the necessary verification of his old account, some old Instagram names (kids these day change their name on Instagram like I change clothes) and his School ID verifying his face with his name.  They also asked him for a mug shot with him holding a series of numbers on a piece of paper that they sent him to make sure he was not a bot.
  • They must have a process where they can look at cached images and match his face with the school ID.
  • After some time, they did send him an email to change his password, which would allow him to change his email address and username.

Lessons Learned

My son, at one time, some kind of way, had over 5K Instagram followers. He built them slowly over the first year or so by posting Nike Sneakers and Basketball stuff and doing the stuff that this age group does… talk mostly over instagram vs. phones and texting.   I am sure that getting an extra 1K followers was going to be a status symbol in his head.

The bigger lesson for him was the lesson of Phishing.  (Maybe some day it will save his bank account information)…  And of course of being a tad bit greedy… and a reminder that sometimes you must work for what you get or sometimes settle for less.

My lesson was to more closely watch his social media habits and that even at the age of 13, I am not going to be able to wave the Parent Wand much longer and get the information I need from Social Media Platform owners.

Thanks Instagram for getting his account back to him and for helping me learn more about Online Child Privacy .