While millions of Instagram accounts are hacked each year with various objectives for the hackers, the risk for French Instagram accounts of brands, influencers and “ordinary” users is very real! In this article, we are going to present you 10 simple but effective tips to best secure your Instagram account and limit the risk of hacking / hacking as much as possible (risk 0 does not exist).
You only have to see via Google Keyword Planner the number of average monthly searches on requests of the type “hack instagram account” (nearly 4000 monthly searches on Google.fr) and all the associated similar keywords to take the the risk of too many unsecured business and personal Instagram accounts.
Table of Contents
1- Set up two-factor authentication on your Instagram account
Most effective method for secure instagram account, two-factor authentication protects your Instagram accounteven if a hacker had access to your mailbox or Instagram account password.
Concretely, this option is activated in a few clicks from your instagram account security settings and will allow you to prevent anyone from logging into your account if it is not recognized by Instagram. A connection code will be sent to you by SMS to confirm that it is indeed you.
This option is activated in the ” Settings -> Security -> Two-Factor Authentication for personal and business accounts.
2- Properly secure access to your mailbox: a prerequisite
The main source of hacking an Instagram account is taking control of the mailbox associated with an Instagram account that is not secured by two-factor authentication.
Indeed, if the hacker takes control of your mailbox, he can very easily request a password reset and thus regain access to your Instagram account and then do what he wants with it (change of name, deletion, …).
To properly secure your mailbox, again, we recommend two-factor authentication (if offered by your mailbox) because this is the most effective security method.
3- Do not reuse a password used elsewhere
Most people reuse the same password in many places.
This practice is known to hackers (not only those who are rampant on Instagram), if they obtain by any fraudulent means an access associated with another account linked to your email, they will potentially be able to access all of your accounts. (including Instagram) as long as you use the same password everywhere.
It is therefore strongly recommended to have a unique password per account.
4- Use a long and strong password (with special characters, numbers, letters and capital letters)
To ensure that your password is as secure as possible, it is strongly recommended:
- long: more than 10 characters if possible (the longer it is, the more secure it is).
- whether it contains capital letters, numbers, special characters.
- it does not contain your initials or date of birth.
5- Change the password each time you leave the company
An intern / work-study / employee had access to your Instagram account and left the company? It is imperative to change the accesses each time you leave the company to guarantee the best possible security of the accounts.
6- Change your password regularly
This trick may seem obvious, but the more often you change your Instagram account password, the better.
7- Use a secure password management tool
Using a royalty-free, encrypted password manager tool can help you manage your passwords. KeePass Password Safe is, for example, a free password manager published under the free GPL v2 license or later which allows you to save a set of passwords in an encrypted database in the form of a single file (latest version at day date of May 2020).
8- Limit the number of people with access to the account as much as possible
It may seem obvious but the more people have access to the Instagram account, the higher the risk of hacking.
9- Do not share access by email
If you want to share access to an Instagram account, never send the password by email but rather by SMS or better, orally.
10- Secure your smartphone
Implementing two-factor authentication without securing access to your smartphone via Face ID, password or even via dedicated antivirus software will be of little interest. Indeed, if the hacker takes control of the entire phone, he can take control of his target’s entire Instagram account without any problem.
If your Instagram account hasn’t been hacked yet and you haven’t followed any of the tips above, the good news is that it’s not too late to start. If you had to follow only one, however, we would recommend the one associated with the implementation of double authentication, which is by far the most effective.
