leugim

My father-in-law have a small business of paellas which he uses to support his family. He have an instagram account called @paellasantamarta which he uses to get most of his customers.

Two days ago some criminal sent a link pretending to be Instagram official account with a phishing link. He was naive and put the account information there.

Soon after some US mobile (+1 XXX) told they hacked his account and want some ransom to return it.

He got some mails indicating that the email was changed and password. The account is now deactivate.

- We tried to undo the change but it's not possible with the instagram emails nor the past login information - We tried to recover multiple times the account via the face verification but he always get this message: "We weren't able to confirm your identity from the video you submitted. You can submit a new video and we'll review it again. Learn more."

Is there something else we can try? We thought about paying the hacker (the ransom is quite hefty for him) but no one assures that we will get the account back.

He is desperate and nervous, he barely slept in the last two days because he is going to lose his small business of paellas. We warned about the phishing attacks but he is stubborn and was convinced Instagram was going to close is account.