Hello everyone!
I’ve read a lot round here but now I’ve found myself in a weird situation and I’d appreciate the advice of some of you experts. Also, I realise this kind of of question has been asked a lot, so apologies in that regard, but I couldn’t find a discussion specifically about this situation. So, here goes…
Last night, I signed up for an account from my home; on my laptop, in a web browser. It’s just for a secondary personal account that I’ll actually use, I’m not up to any tricks. With a username I really want.
So it I enter an email, my name, the username I really want, and a password. Everything’s got a tick beside it, so we’re all good. I hit the button and confirm I’m over 18, then I get an error saying something went wrong, please try again later.
So I tried again from the IG app, on a mobile phone I’ve never used with Instagram before, with Wifi switched off so it’s using 4G. Basically the same thing happens. This time it seems to automatically suggest a name for me based on my real name but gives me the option to change it during sign up. I try to take the username I want again, but now it’s showing as taken, so I try a variation and get the same ‘something went wrong’ error.
So basically I wasn’t allowed to sign up. I’ve already got about 10 or so accounts that I’ve accumulated over the years for different project, most of them unused. So maybe I’ve hit a limit. Fine.
But now the username that I really wanted and the variation I tried are both unavailable, even for one of my existing accounts to change to. And they were definitely available before. So it seems like I actually have been signed up. But when I use either the email or the usernames for a “Forgot Password” login link, it says - “No users found”.
So now it seems like there is no account after all.
Here’s the weird part - If I try to just log in anyway, using the email, I get: “The username you entered doesn’t belong to an account. Please check your username and try again”. So the email doesn’t seem to be associated with anything (although I can’t use it for a fresh signup). However, if I try to use the username to log in, I get either, “Sorry, your password was incorrect”, if I use the wrong password obviously, or, “Your account has been disabled for violating our terms.”
So there does seem to be an account, they have a record of the username, email and password used. But it’s been instantly disabled on signup, that much is clear. Presumably because I already have about 10 account? But like I say, most of those have never been used for anything, I only regularly use my personal account, and I don’t use a bot.
Like I say, it was only the username I cared about and I really wanted it.
Okay, so Instagram don’t want me to sign up for whatever reason, I get that. What I don’t get is why the f* are they allowing the username to be pulled from the pool of available names? Surely this is open to abuse. Some evil person could use a bot to with a list of as-yet-unused usernames, and get them all trapped in this account limbo.
Does anyone have any idea how long usernames in these insta-disabled accounts stay off limits?
Or does anyone know of a good way of going about either getting an account I’ve never even used un-disabled, or getting the username released?
Sorry for such a long-winded first post but I figured you guys would prefer that to “Plz HALP ma acount iz broke!”
And thanks to everyone and their generosity in sharing knowledge for making this such a great community.