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Scammer Service Will Ban Anyone From Instagram For $60 (vice.com) 53

Posted by BeauHD from the underground-industries dept.
Scammers are abusing Instagram's protections against suicide, self-harm, and impersonation to purposefully target and ban Instagram accounts at will, with some people even advertising professionalized ban-as-a-service offerings so anyone can harass or censor others, according to screenshots, interviews, and other material reviewed by Motherboard. From the report: It appears that in some cases, the same scammers who offer ban-as-a-service also offer or are at least connected to services to restore accounts for users who were unfairly banned from Instagram, sometimes for thousands of dollars. "Me (and my friend's) currently have the best ban service on-site/in the world," one advertisement for a ban service on the underground forum OG Users reads. "We have been professionally banning since 2020 and have top-tier experience. We may not have the cheapest prices, but trust me you are getting what you are paying for."

War, the pseudonymous user offering the ban service, told Motherboard in a Telegram message that banning "is pretty much a full time job lol." They claimed to have made over five-figures from selling Instagram bans in under a month. War charges $60 per ban, according to their listing. Another banner on a different underground forum offers the service for between 5 euros and 30 euros per account, depending on the number of followers. That listing advertised bans for accounts up to 5,000 followers, but claimed that higher follower accounts are also possible to ban. The first listing said it can impact accounts with up to 99,000 followers. War said they didn't know why particular customers may use their service, but added "obviously individuals who have money to throw around." Both listings say that a target account must have a human in the profile photo. In War's case, they said they ban users by filing a fraudulent impersonation complaint to Instagram.

For banned accounts, victims generally have to provide Instagram with several pieces of information such as their name, phone number, and linked email address [...]. [P]reviously, once an account was banned, the owner could try to restore it themselves straight away. Recently, Instagram introduced a 24 hour buffer window where a user has to wait before trying to restore the account, they said. But it appears that in other cases some of the people offering restore services are connected to those banning the accounts in the first place. [S]ome victims receive a message offering account restoration immediately after being banned, and that in their own case, the two accounts that launched the ban attack and the one offering the restore service follow each other on Instagram.
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Scammer Service Will Ban Anyone From Instagram For $60 More

Scammer Service Will Ban Anyone From Instagram For $60

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  • Does slashdot not even check headlines for typos anymore?

  • You are the bait to attract other bait to mine data and use every moment to promote wasteful consumption. Don't wait to be banned, simply stop.

    • Where are we *not* being datamined?

      I think the IRS/feds need to take a long look at the data brokers' business operations because I find it hard to believe that Suzy Q's browsing for food processors or the banal shit that goes on Facebook generates data that is as valuable as they would have us believe. I think there has to be some kind of Ponzi scheme going on that is falsely pumping up the value of this line of business.

      I am no business expert, but I know fish when I smell it.

    • Oh No! (Score:3, Funny)

      by ThurstonMoore ( 605470 )

      Please don't ban me from some stupid social media site.

  • they didn't know why particular customers may use their service, but added "obviously individuals who have money to throw around.

    That's not really "throwing around" money as it's less than most peoples grocery bill.

    It almost makes me think better of humanity that with a service at that low a price, Instagram is not devoid of people from millions trying to ban everyone else.

  • servie with a smile (Score:3)

    by Anonymouse Cowtard ( 6211666 ) on Thursday August 05, 2021 @11:17PM (#61662161) Homepage
    You can buy followers, likes, retweets, subscribers. This is the logical progression. Why didn't we hear about it sooner? Next up, microinfluencers are paid to bulk follow a target and gaslight them into suicide. I'd be surprised if it hasn't already happened.

    • Service with a smile- now that's a throwback!

    • ...actually, with all the data dumps from various services, you could go further and get your target banned from lots of things - if not banned, then unable to log on because of repeated failures to provide a correct password or whatever.

      This is the new DDoS - no need to crank up thousands of servers to flood the network any more, just screw over a load of the users of that service and be done with it. Even if the site in question figures it out and re-instates the knocked-out people, they'll still have pis

    • it's a simple faceswap porn upload that will get the faces on facial recognition for instagrams ban list.

      you can't fight it easily as a normal person. thats why they have those follower limits.

  • Let's get busy banning content, guys.
  • Some Insta personalities claim they are making millions (and maybe a few actually do). Ban them, and charge a commensurate fee to restore, not chicken feed! #leaving_money_on_the_table

  • /. needs to get better spel chekkur software.

  • "protections against suicide, self-harm, and impersonation"

    And Apple wants to scan users iPhones "to protect the children".

    "WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?".

    Never trust a giant monolithic corporation to take up the moral guardian gig.

    • A handful of Redditors involved in the GME hodl have been falsely accused of being suicidal or self harming, even getting PMs from complete strangers telling them to not kill themselves. One even put out a statement saying he was not depressed nor at risk of suicide or self harm because of this harassment.

      No moderation system should be automatic. It is not the place of an automated system to judge humans.

      • What's disturbing is how people (or companies) react to people saying they want to commit suicide.

        Apparently your account gets banned if you say you are suicidal (if I read that right). Are you serious?
        "falsely accused of being suicidal." - read that line again, it's basically saying that feeling suicidal makes you a CRIMINAL.

          Fuck this shit.

        • Legally speaking suicide is illegal in many places, but that's more to allow someone to interfere without getting done for a crime or getting sued. If I was to hang myself on my property right now, police would be able to enter without a warrant.

  • Social media addiction is a real problem that has destroyed many lives. And the likes of Fuckbook, in the midst of this controversy decided to remove the ability to delete an account outright, but instead simply deactivates it with a 14 day waiting period before it is gone for good. In the meantime, any action that causes you to get logged back into the account resets this clock.

    This is like leaving out a big cake with a "please don't eat" written on a Post-It note in sight of a compulsive eater.

    The only 'h

    • So you want to leave social media? 1. Get a one time email address 2. Change the email address in your soon to be abandoned account to the one time address, open the email and follow the confirm link 3. Generate a password. Cut/paste to a text editor and change your password to this 4. Close the text editor without saving, log out of all apps, tabs, etc 5. You're free, you can't reset your password because you can't access the email it sends. 6. FREEDOM!

    • My extended family put a mutually-agreed upon hard ban on social media because someone reverse-image-searched an old family photo to try and find his old wordpress blog, and one of the results was a pedo site. You ask my wife if she has facebook she will recount that whole drama and will go ballistic on people who post publicly-viewable pics of their kids because of sick fucks like that.

      • "My extended family put a mutually-agreed upon hard ban on social media because someone reverse-image-searched an old family photo to try and find his old wordpress blog, and one of the results was a pedo site. "

        This is all kinds of ick and this is why people should never share family photos on Facebook allowing the entire public to see it.

        But people won't stop doing this, and we will see more and more disgusting incidents as you described as time goes on.

        I'm glad that the general public was not on the inte

  • That's basically how you play the Reddit game.

  • Reminiscent of the early days of antivirus software.

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