• Appaarently ‘I’ had gone on a borrowing spree and promised to refund with interest
Image: PIXABAY
When your phone starts ringing randomly and it's different people calling, you think that probably something very bad has happened. Well, for me, I thought two things: either explicit images of myself had been leaked all over the Internet, or someone close to me had died. It was none of that. My Instagram account had been hacked!
Monday the 12th of August. I had just left my friend's house after an insane weekend, when I received the first call from Koech, someone who’s very unlikely to call me. Like quite literally, I was on top of a nduthi when I picked up the call and the first words I heard were, “Paps umehackiwa.” Kimberly called next and other texts followed.
Hurriedly, I opened my Instagram account, “You have been logged out”, popped up on the screen. Oh, I’m still on the boda. All attempts to try and recover it were futile. Password and two-factor authentication already changed. It was a done deal. I reach home and first of all freshen up just to wrap my head around what was happening.
Apparently, the hacker-scammer was impersonating me and using my account to text my followers and ask them for money. From as little as Sh400 to as much as Sh5,500. Bollocks! I got ahold of some of the screenshots of the text messages and all I can say is “Eeeewww… I don’t text like that!” I mean like an odi. Also ‘I’ had promised to return the money with interest.
More calls and texts came, even from people I hadn’t heard from in ages. It was kind of nice hearing from them. Most knew I would never ask for such large amounts of money, or rather that I don’t text in such a ghetto way and use ellipses while at it. The few who chose to be ignorant and blindly sent, that’s up to them. They should have known better. Another thing was, I never repost my photos on my stories and put Instagram music on my stories while at it.
On my end, I tried to control the situation by texting beforehand some of my mutual followers on WhatsApp just to warn them that I had been hacked and that they should report the account.
Some advised that I should try and retrieve it but it cost like $250 (Sh32,230). I mean, the account wasn’t paying me so why should I spend even a cent to try and recover it? I hadn’t lost like a million followers, I barely had even a thousand of them. The only loss was of my memories and pictures.
New beginnings. I started a new account. Out with the old, in with the new.
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