OUR OBJECTIVE:

We are three Australian business women with one common goal, to keep business Instagram and Facebook platforms safe from hackers gaining access and taking over our accounts. 

We are the business owners of:

Anna @bohteak

Liz @__wildwarriors

Miranda @sweetsticksau2

OUR PROPOSAL:

Businesses today rely heavily on the Instagram and Facebook platforms for growth, exposure and most importantly, sales.

We propose that Instagram implement a green tick application for business platforms, similar to their blue tick system they have in place for celebrity and influencer accounts. However, our suggestion is that there is a specific business subscription with an annual fee. With this fee, we expect that if our Instagram platform has been compromised in any way, we have a platform in which we can log into and report the issue with an expected turn around time of 24 hours. 

Having all three of our businesses go through a hacking experience first hand; where a current turn around time of reporting to Instagram can take up to six months or not at all, can absolutely destroy a business. It is debilitating and we never want to go through this experience or have any other business owner go through this again. We cannot run businesses under the threat of being hacked and then facing no support from the Instagram platform any longer, this is destroying businesses and change needs to be implemented by Instagram. 

OUR STORY - OUR WHY

We are three business women who have connected over the last few weeks through the same trauma of having our Instagram business accounts hacked and taken from us via phishing links. As a combined group and individually we have first handedly exhausted all avenues to contact Instagram and Facebook to try and retrieve our hacked IG accounts back without success. Every avenue we went down with Facebook or Instagram was a deadend. All three of us have contacted Facebook Messenger for support. However, each time they did not help any further than directing us back to the Instagram Help Centre page. 

The Instagram Troubleshooting instructions provided on the Help Centre page do not assist when your Instagram account has been hacked and all of your account details have been changed by a hacker. One of our accounts even had Two Factor Authentication activated on her account and yet somehow her account was still hacked into.

When the hackers took over our accounts, all three businesses received emails from Instagram advising us that our email, phone number and password had been changed; the message advised us that if we had not made these changes, to click on the link to secure our account. 

Upon clicking those links, they directed us straight to the Instagram Help Centre page. Every avenue and form we had to complete did not help us get our accounts back, we hit road blocks in every direction.

As businesses going through our individual grief with retrieving our accounts back, we all connected with one another online and then joined forces to contact our Australian news media “Channel 9.”

The reporter who had taken on our story contacted Instagram directly for comment regarding the lack of their support in retrieving our business accounts. The reporter also received a similar automated response from Instagram as we did, however, we finally had a direct contact to Instagram and with the assistance of the news media, Instagram then worked quickly to retrieve all three of our business accounts. However, without the help of the news media, we would still not be any closer to retrieving our accounts. Despite having our accounts back, all of us have also lost all of our content/photos on our pages, as they had been deleted by the hackers and Instagram have been unable to help us retrieve our old content.

Since our accounts have been hacked, we have all been contacted by multiple other business accounts who have also recently had their accounts hacked. They have all tried the same avenues to contact Instagram for support in attempts to retrieve their accounts, but sadly they too have had ongoing road blocks and disappointment with no successful outcome, which has resulted in destroying their businesses. 

Please help support our mission to keep businesses alive with more efficient procedures in retrieving hacked Instagram business accounts, by signing this petition.

Thank you for your support,

Anna, Liz + Miranda