Bauhaus-Uni had no access to their Instagram account for months Weimar

Weimar.
Instagram repeatedly sent a confirmation message to hackers, according to the report.

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The Bauhaus University is in control after nine months her Instagram account back. He was hacked in May of last year. The university even knows exactly when the drama began: on May 20, 2020 at 7.40 p.m.

You can access the newspaper’s Instagram account here

University communication was able to prevent the hackers from misusing the account’s content for a long time. Because an employee was logged in, she could at least delete the hacker’s content. A week later, the university also got brief access to their account, was able to change the email address to the correct one and create a new password. But then the dead end was completely closed.

Instagram support is not responding

The university has now also confirmed this. Juern Kruse from the portal “Übermedien” reported about the drama afterwards: “Clear case of: too early happy”, said Kruse. “Whenever the university logged on, the dialog came up, ‘Help us confirm that this is your account’.” – Instagram continued to send the confirmation request to the hacker’s address.

The university has repeatedly turned to Instagram. Always followed the same wrong loop. At some point the support no longer responded.

Facebook sends voucher

The university contacted Facebook, the parent company, named all devices and possible identification details. Philipp, Max, Debbie, Arnel or Daniel got in touch with Facebook. “Everything is cool. Everything is friendly. Bence from Facebook even sent a 25-dollar voucher as a small excuse so that he could advertise on the platform,” said Kruse. Most of the time, the university only got a link to reset the password – and was back in the dead end dialog.

The attempt ended similarly with two registered letters to the managing directors of Facebook Germany GmbH in Hamburg. There was confirmation, just no answer or even a remedy.

Insta account is indispensable for university

The Bauhaus University considered the Instagram account to be indispensable despite the poor service. The channel is essential as an international university with many young students, especially since there is always information about new corona measures.

The Bauhaus University set up a temporary account. Before the hack, she had 17,000 followers. And that with around 4,000 own students. According to Kruse, the replacement channel only brought it to 1500.

Nevertheless, University President Winfried Speitkamp says: You can use it to spread information very quickly to a very large target group. Such an account is simply expected. Almost all universities are represented on Instagram.

In the end, Facebook helped. After nine months. The portal of Jürn Kruse asked the Facebook press office that less than two days later the problem had been solved and the statemanent of a spokesman for the Facebook company came back:

“We understand that losing access to your Instagram account can be unsettling. That is why we want our measures to secure our own accounts to stop malicious actors before they even have access to accounts. But we also want to help people to restore their accounts and have defined ways for this, which users can find in our help area at help.instagram.com. We know we can do more here, and we are working hard in both areas to ensure that our community is safe. “

Aha.

You can access the newspaper’s Instagram account here

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