Account recovery scams: how to spot a fake recovery service

Losing an account is stressful and often urgent — a business page, years of photos, a creator’s income. Scammers know this. Posts that mention being hacked or banned attract automated replies from “recovery experts” within minutes, and comment sections under platform announcements are full of them. The pitch always promises what the official process cannot: speed and certainty.

The uncomfortable truth is that nobody can reach inside Instagram, Facebook or TikTok and flip a switch. Decisions are made by the platform, through its own review processes. Every offer that implies otherwise is selling something that does not exist.

1. They ask for your password, a one-time code or your 2FA backup codes. This is the clearest sign. With those details they can take whatever is left of the account — or lock you out of a recovered one.
2. They claim to work for, or with, the platform. “I am on Meta’s support team”, “I have a contact at TikTok”. Platforms do not sell internal access.
3. They guarantee the outcome, often “within 24 hours”. Only the platform decides, so nobody honest can guarantee it.
4. They want payment first, in crypto, gift cards or a transfer to a personal account — methods that are hard to reverse.
5. They contacted you first, in comments, DMs or a WhatsApp message you did not expect.
6. They push urgency: “your account will be deleted tonight unless…”.
7. They offer to get into someone else’s account. Anyone willing to do that is also willing to do it to you.

A second family of scams impersonates the platform itself: DMs from accounts called “Meta Support” or “Instagram Help”, emails claiming a copyright violation or an imminent deletion, and offers of a free blue tick. They link to look-alike login pages that capture your password and code.

• Instagram does not contact you about account problems through DMs from ordinary accounts.
• Genuine Instagram emails come from @mail.instagram.com; the security settings in the app show a list of recent emails Instagram has actually sent, so you can check any message you receive.
• Do not log in through a link in an unexpected message — open the app or type the address yourself.

• It works only through the platform’s official appeal, report and verification processes, and can explain which one applies to your case.
• It never needs your password or codes; identity checks such as a video selfie are done by you, on your device.
• It gives you a realistic assessment first — including “this one is not winnable” when that is the truth.
• Terms and cost are agreed in plain language before any work starts.
• It refuses to touch accounts that are not yours.

That is the standard we hold ourselves to; the whole process is laid out on how it works.

1. Stop all payments and further contact, even if they promise a refund or “one last fee”.
2. Change the password of the affected account and of the email behind it, and turn on app-based two-factor authentication.
3. Log out of all sessions and remove unknown connected apps.
4. Contact your bank or payment provider as soon as possible to ask about reversing the payment.
5. Report the scam profile on the platform and to your national fraud-reporting service or the police.
6. Be wary of a second wave: people offering to “recover the money you lost” are usually the same scam again.

If the account itself was taken over, follow our hacked Instagram guide or start a case for hacked account recovery.