A man was horrified to learn his Instagram had been hijacked by hackers pretending to be flogging Oasis tickets – scamming his friends out of hundreds of pounds.
Jon’s account was advertising tickets to the sold-out and highly sought-after show, claiming he could no longer attend – and generating plenty of interest amongst his 600 followers, who rushed to DM him and arrange the exchange.
There was just one problem: it wasn’t Jon.
The 37-year-old’s account had been taken over by a hacker who managed to change his password, email and two-factor authentication.
“I felt so helpless and it’s so unbelievably frustrating,” Jon, from Hertfordshire, told Need To Know.
“I know of two friends of friends who lost £300-£400 each.
“People thought they were talking to me when it was a hacker.
“I have no idea how they managed to hack into my account!”
Jon, who never had tickets to Oasis, had no idea anything was amiss until he was at the theatre with his wife on Saturday night (6 September) and he started to receive messages from concerned friends.
He said: “I got a bunch of WhatsApps with screen grabs of the Stories and posts [made by the hacker].
“My wife then spotted it as I was locked out of Instagram and couldn’t get in.
“Even my sister had reposted it, like other friends, trying to be helpful.
“Lots of people messaged, either asking if I still had tickets or to flag they thought I’d been hacked.”
Jon contacted Meta, and has since been able to regain access to his account – though some followers have blocked him, and even sent him angry messages calling him “disgusting”.
He said: “I have seen all the messages from the hacker, which is scary seeing conversations that aren’t from me – but people believed it was.
“I’ve spent over an hour and half going back to messages and apologising for something that wasn’t my fault, and explaining.
“But having to see hate comments isn’t fair or something I should have to deal with.”
Jon has since taken down all of the offending posts, but is left with questions on why this happened to him – and others, having seen the scam circulate elsewhere online.
He added: “It’s a really clever hack, but really cruel.
“I was helpless.”
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