Travel blogger gives warning about online hacking.
Travel blogger gives warning about online hacking
A Sydney Mines-raised travel blogger said her business and livelihood were recently put into jeopardy after someone hacked into her accounts.
Lesley Carter of Bucket List Publications is warning social media users to take steps to protect their online presence.
The Montreal-based travel blogger said in late September, she received an email informing her that a change was made to her Instagram username.
At the time, she had roughly 150,000 followers.
“I was like ‘hmmm that’s weird,’” Carter said. “I didn’t want to click it because sometimes you (think), is this a legit thing?”
Carter tried logging into her business account but was denied.
She received subsequent emails informing that her password and phone number were also changed.
“I could see what it was saying it was changed to, but I couldn’t do anything about it,” she said. “When I was clicking on the link it would say ‘This link is no longer available.’”
Carter said somehow a
hacker from the Republic of Turkey had stolen her password, which she says contained characters and numbers and had been changed as recently as three-months prior.
Carter said she never downloaded any third-party apps or gave out her password to anyone other than her spouse.
What she failed to do, however, was turn on two-factor authentication which is a method of proving a user’s claimed identity.
Once into Carter’s account, the hacker themselves turned
on two-factor authentication, making it harder for her to regain access.
“I had a complete meltdown,” said Carter. “It was like somebody was in my house, setting my house on fire and I was just standing there with a fire extinguisher, but I just can’t turn it on.”
Carter said she had trips planned and photographs that needed to be shared. There would be companies and sponsors who would subsequently contact her looking for their money back as a result of the missing content. Users such as Carter can receive up to $500 and even $1,000 for their online posts.
“This is my livelihood. I post on Instagram on a daily basis for work and I had accounts that were lined up and sponsors that were lined up,” she said.
After searching online for help, Carter came across a purple form on Instagram for hacked accounts.
She received an email from the social media site instructing her to send a photo of herself holding a verification code they would send along.
But the major mistake Carter made was having the same password for both the photo sharing site and her personal email.
Whoever hacked her account was already logged into her email and she had no way of kicking them out. Carter said this person had been waiting in silence for the identifying photo to be dropped in.
“The hacker was already in my email, had downloaded the photo, resubmitted the report to Instagram and then took over it with their new email.”
She said Instagram then reset all her information over for the hacker.
“Hackers aren’t just looking for big accounts,” she said. “They’re looking for accounts of all sizes because they can sell small accounts just the same as they can sell big accounts.”
To keep an online presence, Carter began operating out of another page held by her six-year-old world travelling daughter Athena.
Carter spoke out about the hacking and received hundreds of messages from people who experienced similar problems.
Over the following days, she and her spouse watched as the account was slowly disassembled with hundreds of photographs deleted, engagement minutes dropping and followers vanishing.
She also paid for fraud protection to help ensure her financial accounts would be safe.
Since the ordeal started, Carter lost over 50,000 of her account followers.
“The first day that they stole it they deleted 100 photos right away and I was devasted,” she said. “
After weeks of automated messages from Instagram, Carter contacted CTV News last week who reached out to Instagram on her behalf. Shortly after the news outlet contacted them, her account was returned.
Carter is now warning others about the importance of setting up two-factor authentication on their online accounts.
She also advises keeping a separate password for social media accounts and email.