What if someone wanted to own your Instagram account? Not just control it, but make it totally theirs. This episode tells the story of how someone tried to steal an Instagram account from someone.
Thanks to Nicole Beckwith for sharing her perspective as a police officer.
Sponsors
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Sources
Attribution
Darknet Diaries is created by Jack Rhysider.
Episode artwork by odibagas.
Audio cleanup by Proximity Sound.
Theme music created by Breakmaster Cylinder. Theme song available for listen and download at bandcamp. Or listen to it on Spotify.
Equipment
Recording equipment used this episode was the Shure SM7B, Zoom Podtrak P4, Sony MDR7506 headphones, and Hindenburg audio editor.
Transcript
[START OF RECORDING]
JACK: Whenever I join a social media site or start an online video game, it always goes like this; I load up the web page, click sign-up, and then it asks me a question. What username do you want to be known as? [MUSIC] It never goes as planned. Maybe my first choice is Batman, so I try to make that my username, but the site says that username already exists. How about Batman1989? No, definitely not Batman1989. So, I might try Admin. Nope, that’s not available, either. Then I might try Jack; nope. PapaShell; nope. C-3POwned; nope. KarateSkid; nope. Before I know it, I’m left with some goofy name like PumpkinSpiceSnorter, because it feels like that’s all that’s left. It’s really hard to find a good username that’s not already taken, especially on places like Twitter and Instagram where there are hundreds of millions of people already registered there that have good names already. But what if there was a way to just steal an account name that you really wanted? Surely that would make it a lot easier, right?