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Hundreds of hacking accounts disabled by Instagram

Instagram has disabled the accounts that have been stolen and sold by hackers.

This is due to the escalating issue where hackers steal accounts as attacks in order to steal and resell them.

Some of the intentions of these hackers were mainly obtaining rare usernames with handles of fewer than five letters that would be valuable for resale. This is because Instagram accounts with high followings, verification badges or desirable usernames become valuable for resale.

This kind of operation is against Instagram’s terms of service, but difficult for them to track, which is why they profit a lot from.

Members of the group, known as OGUsers, have received cease and desist letters from Instagram’s parent company, Facebook, which is coordinating with law enforcement to solve the matter.

OGUsers has operated since 2017 and is believed to be responsible for millions of dollars worth of account sales, each one of which can fetch thousands or tens of thousands of dollars each, Facebook said.

Their security team is worried that OGUsers and others like them have become more active and more violent, using threat tactics to achieve their ends.

This has led TikTok and Twitter to also take action on accounts belonging to the same hackers.

The company has promised to protect vulnerable accounts against future attacks by getting them to sign up for a new Facebook Protect program which includes tougher password security and monitors for threats.

Instagram has also released a new feature that allows users to recover deleted posts, in the event a hacker takes control of their account and wipes it clean.

In addition to disabling stolen accounts, they also disabled the accounts of OGUsers middlemen who act as intermediaries during username transactions by holding funds in exchange for a cut of the fee.

OGUsers were behind an unprecedented Twitter hack that involved resetting the account passwords of dozens of high-profile individuals and companies, including Elon Musk and Barack Obama. The individual at the centre of the case, was Graham Ivan Clark, just 17 at the time.

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