I wanted to share with you how to recover a hacked Instagram account, from someone with 7+ years of experience in social media marketing. No fluff.

Method 1)

https://instagram.com/hacked

The first thing I recommend you do is go to the website above.

Select “my account was hacked”

Then, put in your username / email / phone number. Also do anything else they request like a ‘selfie’ or photo of you with ID.

Often times, Meta will get back to you very soon and assist you with recovering your account. If you don’t hear a response though, I recommend refilling this out once a week. Wait times public support forms can often be slow as you are one person on a very long list. It can take up to 30 days.

Method 2)

Business/Meta Verified Support. Run ads or pay $15 for Meta Verified to get access to paid support. Open chat with representative. Ask them to assist you in recovering your profile which was hacked. Be very specific with your case and include any screenshots like the exact time the email was changed on the Instagram profile, if you still have access to your email. Your username, previous email/phone number on file, recent login locations, and include your ID or business documents if the page was not a personal. Reiterate that the Instagram.com/hacked form above did not work and see if they can escalate the hacked case to an internal team.

This method works best when you reach out from a profile that was added to the Accounts Center of the hacked account. If your profile which you’re reaching out from was never connected in the accounts center, many reps will not assist you in recovering your hacked account. I still recommend you try, however, because while rare, sometimes you can get a hold of a manager or somebody who is willing to help, but it is very rare that they assist you if you do not have a profile that was previously connected in the accounts center.

Step by step instructions on how to open a chat with a Meta verified support.

• https://facebook.com/help/178774494481770

• https://help.instagram.com/261957349507759

Make sure to use a profile that was connected in the accounts center.

On the contrary, if you’re a business, you can still use the method above to badge your personal and contact support given profiles are connected in Accounts Center. If you’ve ever paid for ads, you can also reach out to a rep via Facebook Business Support or Commerce Manager Support if you have a catalog / shop to see if they can assist you in recovering your page after hacked.

Follow up every 72 hrs Monday-Friday. Be polite and remember that you’re talking to real human being on the other side of the computer, who’s likely on an 8hr shift talking to people like yourself. If they offer a phone call, take the call. It has a higher success rate.

You can also request refund for the subscription via Apple or the Google play store to get your money back if the method doesn’t work for you.

• https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204084

• https://support.google.com/googleplay/workflow/9813244?hl=en

TIP: To protect your profiles from a future hack make sure you add your Instagram profile and your Facebook profile to the same accounts center so they’re connected. This way, if anything happens, you can use meta-verified support to reach out to a representative and they can assist you because you’ve proven ownership of the profile.

Method 3)

Using NON-PUBLIC support channels. While this won’t be possible for every person, there are non-public premium support channels, which are given to certain partners.

• FORMS - There are some forms that exist which are not publicly advertised to fix issues like hacked accounts or perform unbans or verifications. While I don’t know any forms except public ones, I put FORMs under non-public because I’ve heard of some forms that exist for specific niches or are forms to other departments with faster processing times in Meta. Forms can be public or non-public which is why I mentioned them here in non-public support.

• PORTALS - The most notorious portal is the Media Partner Portal or the Media Partner Panel, but there are many portals like the Musician portals, Government/GPA, Entertainment portals, Facebook Marketing Partner portals, ect. Each portal has requirements, and you can’t submit any account just because you have a portal, which is why these support portals are not viable for most normal accounts and regular people.

• EMPLOYEE CONTACT - Notable brands, agencies, influencers, or advertisers are sometimes assigned an employee for direct contact to assist with any issues they or the brands they represent may have. You should not message any employee of Meta in hopes of recovering your hacked profile. Employees will not help users recover a hacked profile, unless officially assigned to your brand, business, or profile. Furthermore, Meta is a huge company with numerous departments and 50,000+ employees, most of which cannot even contact the department inside Meta to assist with a hacked recovery, but it is a non-public support that does exist which was why I mentioned it.

If you have any questions, please let me know in the comments or inside r/bouc and I’ll help guide you on how to contact Meta’s official support to recover a hacked account on Instagram!