Influencer’s Instagram Account Hacked for a Ransom of S$410

A local influencer, who was formerly a marine systems operator, Clarie Teo's instagram account was hacked; and she found that all her username, password, and email associated to the account were completely changed. She also discovered that she is no longer able to log in to her account.

The 25 year-old girl, Clarie Teo, became famous in the year 2015 when she was featured for Cyberpioneer, a monthly magazine of Republic of Singapore Navy (RSN). She caught the eyes of the public because of her good looks. Though she is no longer associated with RSN now, she has enrolled herself at the National University of Singapore for studying Mechanical Engineering.

Teo's instagram account, having an account id "@xclarieacaciateo" got hacked on 20 September 2018. She used her instagram account to promote brands of apparel and cosmetics on a regular basis, and was having above 20,000 followers.

She revealed in an interview to Chinese daily called Lianhe Wanbao that she received emails from the hackers that informs about hacking of her Instagram account. She further stated that the hackers threatened him in the email that if she does not reply within the next three hours, they would delete her account completely.

Half-an-hour after the first email, the hackers sent her another email in which they asked her to pay a ransom amount of US$300, which comes to S$410 in order to get back the access of her account. As she did not reply to the hackers' email, Teo received another e-mail after 20 minutes from the hackers saying that they would delete all her photographs and would sell off her account.

"As the e-mails were sent from overseas, I believe that they belong to foreign hackers. My account was secured with the two-factor authentication, but it still got hacked," she said this to Wanbao.

Not replying to any of the hackers' emails, Teo reported the incident immediately to the Police and also to the Instagram officials. She doubted that the hackers might have got her information from the two old accounts (Tumblr and Neopets), which she was not using for a long time.

Miss Teo's has told Wanbao that her last posting was on 16 September 2018, and she has still not gained back the access to her instagram account. She is planning registering for a fresh new account retaining her original username.

However, after the hacking, she has faced a monetary loss, which she used to get ($400 for every post) because of having 20,000 followers.

» SPAMfighter News - 10/19/2018