During the use of their account, some users may encounter glitches and difficulties, such as when Instagram automatically follows unfamiliar people. The reasons for this may vary, ranging from page hacking to the profile owner’s own carelessness. Let’s discuss how to tackle this issue.
Causes
Sometimes an unpleasant situation occurs when a service starts subscribing to other accounts without your knowledge. The page owner begins to notice that the number of their subscriptions has unexpectedly increased, and there is not a single familiar contact among them. Why does this happen?
Is Instagram to blame? There can be many reasons for such malfunctions, ranging from the user’s own carelessness to a hacker’s account takeover. Let’s consider popular cases:
- Before panicking, carefully think and use your memory. Perhaps you sent a friend request yourself and forgot about it by accident. This happens when the recipient has a private page and their approval does not come immediately.
- Using third-party services to promote your profile on social media by artificially increasing likes, followers, and views.
- The worst-case scenario is that your page has been hacked, and without your consent, advertising banners are being spread or unknown people are being added to your friends list.
In any case, it is necessary to investigate the problem, and to do so, you need to determine the true cause of suspicious activity on your account. Below, we will consider popular cases and try to find a way out of the situation.
Hacking Instagram
The worst-case scenario is when a hacker successfully attacks your Instagram page. Here are some tips to help determine the security of your profile:
1. If your account has been hacked, you probably won’t be able to log in to the social network. In most cases, the attackers change personal information in the settings. The only way out of this situation is to try to recover your password through your attached email or phone number, and contact technical support to resolve the issue.
2. There are situations when scammers try to use your data unnoticed, periodically logging into your account and subscribing to third-party resources and pages.
With the latest update of the service on your personal computer, you can track suspicious activity by geolocation. Follow these simple instructions:
1. Open any browser on your PC and go to the official social network website.
2. Enter your login and password to identify the user.
3. On the main news feed, go to your personal account by clicking on the silhouette of a person on the top panel of the desktop.
4. Then click on the settings section, the icon looks like a gear.
5. An additional menu will appear, select the “Authorizations” parameter.
6. The next page will display a list of geolocations from which you logged into your account recently.
7. Carefully check the location on the map. If you were not there at that time, click the “It wasn’t me” button.
8. The system will suggest that you increase the security level of your profile and change your protective password.
This way, you can understand if someone suspicious has used your page without your permission.
It should be noted that scammers may have used the VPN function, which hides the actual user’s address during authorization. Unfortunately, this function is not available on mobile devices.
Services for boosting subscribers
The next reason for suspicious activity on your profile may be due to the use of additional services for quickly promoting your Instagram account in order to increase popularity and earn money. Most of these applications and platforms work automatically. The customer sets the necessary parameters and requirements, and the system does the rest – increasing likes and views, followers and new friends.
If you have previously ordered such services online, it is worth opening the corresponding program and checking its activity. There are cases when a user’s request is not fully executed and is postponed for a certain period of time. You can check for the presence of additional utilities in the computer version of the social network. Go to the settings section of the service and select “Apps and Websites”, where all third-party services that used your login and password from Instagram or Facebook will be displayed.
Private profiles and changing the theme
Now let’s talk about the inattention of users themselves. Don’t panic if your profile suddenly subscribes to a new person. The reason may be simple – the recipient of your request responded and approved it. This is how closed accounts work. To access such a profile and its publications, send an official friend request. Only after they approve it, you can communicate with them and view their posts. The situation is that sometimes a user may respond positively after a long time. And when this happens, you simply forget about the request you sent.
The next case concerns a change in the theme of the account or public page, that is, when you wrote a friend request, the selected contact talked about fishing on their page, but after unblocking, the content theme changed and now they post news about cars. You may have simply forgotten or not recognized them, mistaking them for an unknown person.
How to Maximize Your Instagram Security: Tips
If you don’t want to end up in a similar situation, being hacked and losing access to your account, try to follow simple rules and tips:
- Never leave your mobile device unattended, especially in public places.
- If you logged into Instagram from someone else’s mobile phone or personal computer, always log out of the account and do not save your password and login. Otherwise, they can be used by third parties.
- Under no circumstances should you tell anyone your security password.
- Try to come up with a complex code combination that only you will know. To increase reliability, periodically change the sequence of characters in the application settings, especially in case of suspicious activity.
- Activate two-factor user identification so that in addition to the password, a special code that will come to the linked phone number in the form of an SMS message is required for each authorization.
These measures will help you securely protect your personal data and prevent hacking attempts.
The article explains why Instagram subscribes to fake and unknown pages on its own, examines the most common reasons and mistakes. In most cases, the culprits are the forgetfulness and inattention of the users themselves.