Did you receive an email from Instagram asking you to change your password or update some other setting in the account? There is a chance that it could be a phishing email message. Phishing email messages pretend to come from a well known website like Facebook, Twitter or Instagram but are actually sent by cyber-criminals in order to steal your account credentials.
These phishing email messages usually are about the security of your account and tell your change some settings or update some details. At the bottom of these email messages is a link that is supposed to take you to the official website where you can login and make these mentioned changes. But in reality, this link takes you to a phishing website that looks just like original. When you enter your credentials on this phishing site, they are stolen and then you are redirected to the actual website.
If you see a suspicious email message coming from Instagram, then you can easily identify whether it is phishing message or is actually sent by Instagram, in the following manner:
- In your desktop web browser, visit https://www.instagram.com/. Login using your credentials.
- Click on the user profile icon near the top-right.
- Click on the cogwheel icon next to your name on Instagram.
- Select Emails from Instagram from the menu that pops up.
- In the following screen, you can see all the email messages sent by Instagram in the last 14 days. For your convenience, they divide the email messages in two categories – related to security and other type of messages.
- If you don’t find the suspicious looking message listed here, then that message is phishing email message. If you find a matching message, then you know it is a genuine message sent from Instagram.
This feature makes it very easy for anyone to identify phishing emails that pretend to be sent by Instagram. This feature should also be adopted by other apps and services.