Some Celebrities’ IG Accounts Are Hacked & Locked Out; Police Reports Made

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But being hacked in Instagram? That can be a hair-raising experience.

More so if the hacker is a determined, pesky, increasingly-frustrated person hell bent on communicating with you and receiving payment.

Just ask celebrity hairstylist David Gan.

David Gan: Payment For Return of Account

According to AsiaOne, David and two other actresses, Chen Xiuhuan (also known as Sherry Tan, the actress who only uncles and aunties recognise nowadays) and Aileen Tan have had their Instagram accounts hacked.

All three public figures were purported to have amassed more than 40,000 followers each and were active users over the last few years.

Over a phone call with AsiaOne, David shared that he was first contacted via email on 2 May 2019 with a request for payment in exchange for a return of his account.

Here are the messages in full.

2 May 2019:

Hi,

After reviewing your Instagram’s account activity during the past year we have noticed that it has strictly broken some of our main terms. Due to that, we were responsible to remove your Instagram account. If you want us to reactivate the account again, you must pay compensation to us. Are you interested?

Please note that unless the compensation is payed (sic), every account with your name and pictures will be automatically removed from our Instagram community app.

After the initial email, David received 3 more emails till May 4, with an ever-increasing tone of desperation with each.

2 May 2019:

Hi,

As reported in our previous email, many users of Instagram have reported you as a spam account. That’s why we needed to take your account down. If you Pay Compensation to us, you will get one more chance with your Instagram account. Do you want or no (sic)?

3 May 2019

Hi,

This message is here just to inform you that the compensation must be payed (sic) within 24 hours or else we won’t be able to recover your account.

Thanks

4 May 2019

Do you want to pay and have your Instagram account or no (sic)?!

At the very last try, the hacker snipped it short and left David with a demanding one-liner, remaining consistent with a lack of punctuation and apparent grammatical error.

He has since made a police report.

Not for the awful English, but the ransom you know?

Last checked, his account appears to have been removed.

Aileen Tan: Email and Instagram down

Longtime actress Aileen Tan felt suspicion rising last Friday, 3 May 2019, when she was not able to successfully log into her Yahoo email account.

Despite facing issues during the verification process, Aileen was able to successfully retrieve her email account on May 4 but has since been unable to log into her Instagram account which was linked to her Yahoo email.

A seasoned user of the platform, Aileen had amassed more than 44,500 followers and more than 2,000 posts.

Aileen has since made a police report out of fear that an impostor might deceive her followers.

Her Instagram account is still online.

Chen Xiuhuan: Abrupt Change in Instagram Handle 

According to Lianhe Zaobao, veteran actress Chen Xiuhuan’s Instagram account was hacked on 25 April.

She first noticed suspicious activity on her account the day before; her handle had mysteriously been changed.

Xiuhuan tried changing her password after friends and family alerted her to the situation, but it was to no avail.

To make matters worse, she wrote that she proceeded to “watch her photos getting deleted one by one,” in a Facebook post.

Xiuhuan is still trying to recover her account and has made a police report.

Last checked, her account seems to be offline, though it may be that it’s under a different handle.

 

So folks, please keep your accounts safe and passwords private.

And, for the time being, don’t believe anything from the three celebrities’ accounts, yeah?