[MAY/JUNE 2020 FIX] "Help Us Confirm You Own This Account" [SOLUTION]

[Gtamaster]

Hello All,

Many of us were hit in this current wave of Account Lockouts.

I recovered most of my accounts with the following & seen it work for others during this time so consider this an updated version of prior threads in clean place with some thoughts at the end as to its cause.

Here’s what I did that worked & what I think is the new essential to get past this bug.

Step One [THE MOST IMPORTANT STEP]: Find the device you most frequently used to login to the locked account.

In many cases, this will be the device you created the account on.
In others, it will be a secondary device you may have forgotten about.

In my recovery, many of my accounts were not created by an Instagram app, but they were logged in to a device long enough to work as the originating device (or at least considered to be so)

I can’t emphasize this one enough.

If the device you are using doesn’t work for what follows, find any/all other device(s) you logged into the account from & attempt the following steps.

If you don’t do this, you will be redirected to the Instagram FAQ Help page on the given device. I was here for about 24 hours before introducing this one little tweak into my attempts.

I was quite surprised at which devices worked to recover the accounts, but the common thread was the same: the account’s time spent on a specific device &/or the earliest devices to frequently use the account.

If you get this, the rest is relatively straight forward.

If you don’t have access to the appropriate device, you will have to refer to another guide/method until IG cleans this up… Unfortunately.

Step Two: Enter the Accounts Username.

• Simple enough

Step Three: Click on “Forgot Password”

• iOS will have a more straight forward process of resetting your password.
• Android Users will have to exercise some patience through the extra steps.

Step Four: Enter your Username Again on the prompt.

• [iOS] Make sure you toggle over to the username prompt as it sometimes defaults to the phone number.
• [Android] This will be a standard one entry prompt so just enter your username.

Step Five: Click “Need more Help?” below the "Next Prompt

• [iOS] This will be directly below the blue “Next” button
• [Android] This will typically show at the bottom of your screen.

Step Six: Choose your method of recovery.

• [iOS] This process is straight forward if you are familiar with Email/PV. Just follow every prompt & change your password. You should have access to your account again. In the off chance you don’t, wait a few minutes. Delete the Instagram App, reinstall it, & attempt to login again with the new password. It should work now.

• [Android] This will begin a longer process. You will have to go through more prompts described below to close this out.

In the following screen, you will need to enter the email used to create the account in the first prompt or a contact email if that’s not available in the prompt directly below.

Many of you, like myself, have several non-personal & non-brand pages so select “personal account without photos of me.” [Obviously select the option that is most appropriate for the accounts you are recovering.

Select “My account was hacked” in the next prompt as there’s no other option to account for advance password resets or account access.

Feel free to refer to the login loop in the next prompt to give them more details. I think the more of us that do complain & share this, the better our chances of them cleaning this up for those who can’t do this.

Facebook will send you the following email:

Hi,
Thanks for contacting Instagram. To help you get back into your account, we’ll need the following information:

1. A brief description of the issue you’re experiencing, including the date you last had access to your account and how you lost access.

2. The email address or mobile phone number you used to sign up for your account.

3. The device you used to sign up for your account (example: iPhone, Android, iPad, computer). If you signed up on a computer or tablet, please also tell us which operating system you used (example: Windows, MacOS, Linux) when you signed up.

4. Any previous usernames you’ve had on the account you’re requesting support for

Keep in mind that we won’t be able to help you until we receive this information. For help logging into your account, you can also visit the Help Center: [redacted link here]

From there, you will have to wait & do anything they ask.
[FIN]

While I currently wait for my 3 android accounts, all of my iOS based accounts were recovered instantly.

From what I understand, they’ll send you a link to restore your account & you should be able to get in.

I have to attempt this process again on my android device since I did not proceed to reset the password once I arrived there [I got antsy lol]

If someone has more immediate success at that point than I, I’ll update this to reflect that if I can.

Last Thoughts & Potential Causes [Feel free to skip]:

By requiring us to access our accounts from an originating device (the one we spent the most time on, or the creation device), it could be an attempt to specifically target the account (buying/selling, trading, & Growing) market as many accounts trade ownership/device homes multiple times.

They already made it very difficult to create accounts without phone numbers. So it seems they’re taking the next steps forward finding success there.

This could be a move to cripple that market seeking to get a leg up on the platform, & further “encourage” users to buy ads to gain the reach they seek.

Some of this may be motivated by upcoming Elections to prevent another 2016 Twitter Nightmare from befalling the platform. I could imagine this passing completely by then.

But who knows.

Anyways.

What’s important now is that the originating device is the key to recover access to the account.

Go find that device! More reasons to keep it now.

Give this a like if this helped you!

Good luck

Update [06/24/2020]
I noted that I would update this if I received any new information.

For Android based users, I received the follow up email yesterday from Facebook [06/23/2020] which was a for what seems as a password reset. This was the email I received.

Hi,
Thanks for verifying your identity. You’re almost done recovering your account.

To reset your password and gain access to your account:

1. Log out of any Instagram account you may be logged into on your computer, phone or tablet
2. Once you’re completely logged out, click the following link: [redacted]
3. If you’re prompted to enter your username, enter said username as your username

You can change your username, email and phone number once you log in. To learn how to update your information: [redacted]

If you have questions about how to keep your account secure, you can find more information and tips in the Instagram Help Center: [redacted]

Thanks,
[Inserted made up name]

Results: i got stuck in the loop again, although I think its my error. Like the original OP, I got a little too excited & didn’t do the recovery on the originating device. When I attempted to use the link again on the proper device, it said I needed a new token. So back to the early steps again. Fortunately, what to do there was written so its a waiting game again. Immediately received the email to send the verifying information so sending that in now & waiting to redo this again.

[Gtamaster]

Bump. Let me know if this worked for you guys

[Gaevintt]

Hi, thank you so much for sharing!
But How long does Instagram take your account back after send the email?

[Gtamaster]

I’m not sure exactly since I messed this part up in my run on Android. I sent the email, but I also tried to see if I could access my Android-based locked accounts on my iOS device as I had success there with others.

I may have accidentally put in a request to get help accessing my account, so I received a login link not too long after attempting on iOS.

Problem is, I’m not sure whether or not that was from my response to the email or by my accidental mistake.

If it were from the email, I imagine it would be anywhere from hours to a few days.
If it were from my mistake, then I have not gotten a response yet.

But as I have recovered accounts before using the email prompts sent via Facebook, I would imagine the wait shouldn’t take longer than a few days in most cases.

So just be patient with it.
If a week goes by and you hear nothing, I would do it over again.

Hope that helps!

[StormBoy]

great guide , but sadly this will not work for everyone , especially if we buy bulk accounts for doin m/s or something similar , unless there is a way to automate process (i dont think so)

@Gtamaster

until IG cleans this up…

when you say this , you think they will remove it ? i hope so man… cuz otherwise like you said its already a hard time to automte on it , if this become executed on all mass bought accounts we are in trouble

[Gtamaster]

Yeah at the end of my OP I make a note at who this seems to target, and those who are in the account market, both buying & selling, seem to be the targets of this.

Time’s like these really call for the IG marketers to go back to basics. Make your own accounts, use your own phone numbers, & use good content… unless you are in the pure spam market.

For that I would wait some time.

@StormBoy

you think they will remove it ?

As far as I understand, almost exactly one year ago we had the largest ban/action block wave to happen in IG history to date, specifically targetting action limits. This crippled the account growing market significantly (in so far as those who were inexperienced in IG account growth were wiped out along with many growth services).

A year later, we don’t see many posts about those account limits. They’ve certainly calmed their hammer down on that since they accomplished what they wanted (Research their whitepaper experiment on targeting growth hackers using follow/unfollow).

This feels like another targeted venture like the last, also hitting very legitimate accounts who never even conceived the idea to use Instagram for business.

I expect to see this continue & probably get worse as we approach the anniversary of the last mass hammering’s peak.

And if the timeline’s reflect the last mass disruption wave, see this slowly dwindle by early next spring.

[StormBoy]

tbh with all realism , i think you’re right , but with a bit of more hope and postitivity , i think at the end they will not abuse it or it can cause them issues even with ‘normal users experience’ and thanks to this reason we still automate and also it will be same thing for this issue , just i think account sellers will give bit more instructions and add stuff (maybe useragent…) to acounts in bulk , cuz i really dont see spamming and automatioith bulk account anywahere going if it stayed for 7years surely it will still be same for many year to come , if they start tryin to analyze every little account its huge millions if not billions of $ of investement to completely end up spam , wich they will never do , + their servers gonna need much more investment too to handle billions of spam account that come and go every week (just ceck stats of how many accounts get removed per year on ig ) you wll be shocked ,

anyway i hope its more a little thing they will do just on accounts that change devices too much in low amount of time , so solution will be easier , rather than something else

[Gtamaster]

Definitely. There’s certainly a maximum threshold they can do this before it significantly disrupts their network. I think they have some AI (pattern recognition) code they are using to target accounts.

One target metric I could imagine they implemented for this mass lockout loop was on the # of unique device logins.
Maybe by how frequently it logged into a new device over a period of time, or total device logins for example.

But of course, no AI (pattern recognition) code will perfectly account for who they intend to target. Like last year, many “normal” users of the platform got hit with bans, never touching automation or account growth methods. We are seeing this happen already for “normal” users with no solution or thought to seek one, they just give up their account.

With that said, I like keeping my optimism grounded in reality. The worse IG can do is shoot themselves in the foot by doing this (the # of automated accounts helping them achieve their aims is more numerous than human users). The best they can do here is segment a little more money into ad revenue on the platform.

Beyond that, its still clear skies. Just gotta survive, adapt, & wait it out if that’s all you can do.

But it’s not a war against automation; Rather, its just fishing out some low hanging fruit to dry themselves into buying ads as their only recourse to get the reach they sought from what IG targeted.

On the other side of that, they need automation whether they admit it or not.

So that’s never going away, just going to change form & the best will adapt along with it.

If this aspect of “combatting spam” or “cheating their system” remains, in so far as buying/selling accounts, we will start to see premiums come for accounts. In the most extreme cases, people may ask for the device the account was created on. We may even see that market pop up from sellers.

I’m optimistic as opportunity always presents from adversity. It’s just coming from informed positions rather than blind faith. Best to know ten steps ahead than guess.

In this case, we just gotta hop over the low hanging shit they’re throwing to enjoy the fruits that we eat on their platform.

Anyways, hopefully this solution & many others that may pop up following this serve to do that.

[Gaevintt]

I have around 50 accounts got these stuck with “Get Help to Logging in”. I filled the form with 4 questions (above) after clicked “Need more helps” for 5 accounts for 5 days and replied their email. But I didn’t receive response from Instagram so far.
Do you guys have any update for this problem?

[Matta28]

Tried this for 10 accounts, ofc only one of them would work. Waiting for the email now, but it’s killing me that the rest of the 9 accounts is still in the loop!

[Alex11]

had the “help us confirm account issue” with a client

Their account was disabled -is that normal after too many log in attempts?

[Luca]

i’m not sure if too many login attempts will lead to a disabled account, do you think that is the main reason for that?

[Gtamaster]

One of my accounts that requried this method still hasn’t been unlocked via the email reply.

I’m currently testing another method out while I wait for the email that I saw work “accidentally” for another locked out account that I never bothered to try unlocking.

Essentially a brute force login spree until the account unlocks from that loop.

If I see some repeated results, I’ll throw in an update.

[Gtamaster]

It’s definitely an annoyance. I prefer having my accounts on iOS devices so I avoided much of the difficulties with the email method via Android.

My android based accounts are in the same effective position of waiting.

My reply above is something I’m trying out for those accounts while I wait for the (response) emails.

[Gtamaster]

I don’t think that’s normal like @Luca says.

As experimental proof, I had accounts that I did not remember to turn off from my software which kept attempting to login for over a week.

One of those accounts unlocked themselves, which is something I’m now testing out on other accounts to see if this can help mitigate the waiting period.

If the account is disabled, it’s probably due to something else.
But that process is much more friendly than this one to recover it.

[Luca]

that sounds interesting Gtamaster, did you receive any kind of notifications or verifications on those accounts for trying to login too many times?

[Gtamaster]

Nope, at least not that I’m aware of. The software would’ve produced visible errors to me if that were the case, but I received none of those on my normal daily visits.

Its for that reason alone I’m trying this out. No harm in trying while working out other methods (in so far as the Android method goes lol)

[swissbull]

Tried this method, I don’t get an answer from them so far.
Also tried the previous method but I do not receive the “Password confirmation” email, any idea? Willing to pay to restore the account

[swissbull]

Any solution for me?

[med_akli]

I have the same problem . Any solution