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InstLike – the Instagram scam that fooled thousands

Jonathan Riggall

Jonathan Riggall

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Getting ‘likes’ on Instagram is such a big draw for some people that thousands fell for a scam app called InstLike, which promised ‘new Instagram likes and followers for FREE!’.

To get your free likes and followers, all you had to do was provide your Instagram login details. You would then get new followers and likes, according to the app. In reality, InstLike would take your account and use it to like random photos and follow random users. It gave you 20 virtual coins every day to spend on likes or followers, but you could also buy more coins with real money.

InstLike – the Instagram scam that fooled thousands

People did indeed pay for likes and followers, as InstLike was the number one or two highest grossing app on the App Store for most of October. All of this is against Instagram’s terms of service.

Security firm Symantec, talking to Mashable, said the app was downloaded between 100,000 and 500,000 times on Android alone, with possibly a similar number on iOS before both were discovered and removed from the stores. You can see on Instagram that the hashtag #instlike_com was extremely popular, with 523,602 photos tagged currently.

InstLike looks very suspect from the start, with a misspelling of Instagram on its login page, and a disclaimer that actually said ‘we don’t steal your account’!

Any app or service that asks for your login details is suspect. Instagram and other services like Twitter use APIs, where you authorize apps to have access to your accounts. This system means third part apps don’t get hold of your login details, keeping you safe. Never give away your login details to third party apps, sites or services.

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[Source: Mashable]

Jonathan Riggall

Jonathan Riggall

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