Branden Harvey is no stranger to people impersonating him or stealing his work on Instagram.
This happens more often than you'd think, and you don't have to be famous, or even Internet famous, to be a victim. Harvey is a photographer, and the first time he discovered someone posting his photos was about three years ago when his account was really taking off. It's happened a few times since then.
Sometimes it's just obnoxious, where people are "spammy, or just impersonating." But sometimes, it's much more than that. "The aggravating time was more malicious. Like, [someone] pretending to be me in a really condescending, rude way. It was the type of thing that if misinterpreted as real, could do some real damage."
So Harvey reported it. And eventually, the bogus account simply vanished, disappearing into the ether without any word from Instagram. And that's a problem. Instagram doesn't have a mechanism for letting users know it's investigating bogus accounts, and doesn't tell people when, or if, those accounts are deleted.
I've had some experience with this myself, though nothing so disturbing as what Harvey endured. For reasons that can only be traced to unadulterated vanity, I'd recently been thinking that my Instagram handle, @mollygrams, isn’t as clever as it could be. @mollygram would be just a bit more on point. Anyone who has a moderate interest in Instagram or Twitter has thought about their handle—you think our own David Pierce originally owned @pierce? Think again. So I searched for "mollygram" to see if it was available. It wasn't. It was being used---with my photos.
My first thought was someone is impersonating me. But the more I thought about it, (I think a lot about stuff like this), the more that didn't make sense. First, @mollygram started five years ago, and the person stopped posting almost immediately. It featured nine photos---my family, a few unflattering selfies, that type of thing. It was too old, and had too few photos, to be effective spam. I wondered if it might be a test account I'd created and abandoned (I am always trying new apps, so this is not unusual). I tried logging in. No dice. I tried changing my password, but never received a reset email. I tried, twice, without success to contact Instagram support via email. Reporting the account via the web didn't help, either.
Granted, this was, at best, mildly annoying. Many people actually are being impersonated, and running into the same problems trying to sort it all out. “I just pounded on the report button a few times, maybe filled out a form, and it disappeared months later," Harvey says about one of his impersonation reports. He never received a response from Instagram, and only discovered that Instagram had 86'd the account when he searched for it.
That seems to be how it happens. Often, Instagram offers no indication that anything is being done about the problem. Sometimes the offending account remains, other times it simply vanishes.
That's eventually what happened to @mollygram. I talked to someone at Instagram about my problem. All signs pointed to this being a test account, I was told, created simply to experiment with Instagram. I created it before @mollygrams, and used the same device to create both accounts. So, yes, my initial reaction---"Hey! Someone stole my photos!" was wrong. (In my defense, I have had photos stolen and posted in obscure Internet forums, so that reaction was not unfounded.) But the problem remained---I could not delete an account I did not want.
So, the thing is, even though it’s probably mine, I still want it gone… I replied. It is gone, Instagram told me. It seems my last attempt at reporting @mollygram had done the trick. But I'd received no confirmation of that. It's odd to feel haunted by someone (or even stupid, past you), only to have it just go away with no explanation, no announcement, nothing.
Though I was a victim of nothing more insidious than forgetfulness, it got me thinking about reporting accounts, something that's surely of great importance to someone who is being impersonated, or harassed, by a bogus account. You don't have to be a Kardashian to see this happen. There are many documented cases of normals who’ve had photos lifted from their pages and posted by other accounts.
“Fraudulent accounts are a major issue for both brands and celebrities, but the impersonation of individuals can also be appealing to bad actors,” says Devin Redmond, vice president and general manager of social media security and compliance at online security firm Proofpoint. “While Instagram and other platforms do a lot of good work to ensure that only valid accounts are created they also have to make sure their sign-up process is easy to encourage adoption.”
In other words, it’s easy to make accounts, but it can be harder getting rid of them. You can see why Instagram would want to make signing up simple. It's harder to understand why it wouldn't keep people appraised of what's happening once they report a fraudulent account. Why isn’t there a message or status report that lets you know, “Yep! We got it!”? Facebook has its Support Inbox, which checks in with you on the status of your help requests. You do get an interstitial from Instagram that lets you know hitting the "report" button indeed worked, but that's the end of communication. But if Instagram disables an account, the person behind it is alerted the next time he or she logs in and can appeal the decision.
Instagram didn't have a lot to say about how it handles impersonators and bogus accounts, telling me that it didn't want to tip unsavory types off to its methods for dealing with this problem. So we're left to wonder just what happens once you click "report."
To be fair, Instagram doesn't make someone explain why he or she is reporting the account, which suggests its attitude is No need to tell us the whole story, we believe you! And then there's the fact Instagram is so big, replying to each person reporting an account may not be feasible. "Instagram grew by over 100,000,000 users in 2015. Dealing with that level of growth is a challenge and even more challenging is dealing with the narrower demographic trying to abuse others on the network," says Redmond. He says Instagram has always been responsive and proactive when Proofpoint comes to them with its clients' problems.
Still, if Facebook, with more than 1.5 billion active monthly users worldwide, can keep people somewhat appraised of the process, you'd think Instagram could. More useful yet would be a Google-like reverse image check---others wondered about being able to comb the platform for stolen photos, not just me.
Luckily, there are a few steps to take if you find yourself being impersonated, because the purpose of such an account usually is focused on more than messing with you. "Bad actors [can] build a network based on the trust and influence you have with friends and coworkers,” Redmond says. “They could then use that network to distribute malware or phish unsuspecting followers.”
The best thing to do if this happens is very obvious but it bears repeating: Report it to Instagram, then tell everyone you know about it, so they don’t click on anything posted or messaged by or from the account. “In addition to the reporting function provided for individuals on Instagram, the platform also provides APIs which allow vendors like Proofpoint to facilitate the identification and takedown process for brands and celebrities,” says Redmond.
And then, open up Instagram, search for the offending account, and see for yourself if it’s suddenly, without explanation, gone.
