Has anyone else had the unfortunate experience of their Instagram account just vanishing? It sounds ridiculous but that is exactly what happened to mine. My username was Onelittletaste and then yesterday after uploading an image my account just simply did not exist anymore. The whole thing was deleted like it had never been. No warning, not suspended just totally gone and now I've lost all faith in the Instagram platform for business and feel totally at a loss for what happened.
A bit of background info, in a graphic designer full time, allot of what I do running a design agency involves designing food pckaging, and working with large food producers. I decided to start a side project to keep me creative and to give my wife and I something to do together. We decided to do some food photography using recipes we had found and collected over the years. We decided to start on Instagram before a website/Facebook page.
Two weeks into instagramig I had almost 100 followers and was being noticed by local businesses and industry professionals, it was great. We loved it, loved that we were being noticed by the right people then BAM all of a sudden after uploading a picture to Instagram my phone logged me out. I thought that was weird but then I went to sign in and it wouldn't let me. Thinking I had forgotten my password I tried to reset it only to get an error message from Instagram saying 'the account does not exist!' Sure enough I go to the website address through a computer and an error message comes up saying the account no longer exists or has been removed. No warning, nothing just completely deleted. Not banned for violating any terms or anything - completely gone.
Sure I've lost 2 weeks worth of contacts, likes and communication with others but my reputation is now shot. Do I start again and run the risk of it happening again? Without knowing why my account is gone I am scared and have lost all confidence in Instagram and am scared it will happen again. I can't really beg the same people who liked me to like a new account again - and I don't want them thinking I'm a spammer or are plagerising for posting the same pictures. We chose our name specifically, after lots of research because the Instagram account, url, Facebook account and every other social media account was available. Now it is not, it's a joke.
Worst of all I can't even get my old username back because Instagram won't let me. It says it's taken despite my account being deleted. I don't know who to contact, I've Facebook messages, I've tweeted and I've done all I can but there are no contact details for Instagram at all. Looking up others in the same situation it seems as though the only way they have had any luck is because they know someone who works for either Facebook or Instagram
I'm completely out of luck on that front.
Overall the experience has made me totally loose faith in Instagram. I really love he platform but am scared to build anything up again if it can just disappear without a trace. As the head of a design studio with some large clients there is no way I'll be recommending clients use Instagram now. It's just not viable or professional if accounts can be totally deleted with no warning, no 'slap on the wrist' no 'suspended account' but just straight up wiped clean, deleted, gone, vanished.
Interested to hear if this has happened to anyone else. Appreciate any help that anyone can offer!
I had the same issue when I created one, but with an email that is a forwarder instead of a "real email" so I assumed they found out. I later realized I had a missing character in my new IG account.... so I honestly thought I was deleted, heck even tweeted at IG (with no response of course). Not saying its the same in this case but just saying with my experience.
That could be a reason, I did use a forwarder email – I just set up the business/domain name so didn't have hosting but had my email forwarded to my gmail account. I've created a new account now and have put my gmail account as the email rather than the forwarder. Thanks for the info! Better than any help from Instagram!
This sounds crappy, but I wouldn't go as far as to say that it's a reason to not use Instagram. 500 million users including hundreds of thousands / millions of brands, it can't be a common problem.
Have you tried reaching out to Instagram support and asking what happened? That'd be my first step.
I've tried everything to get in contact with them, they don't have an 'Instagram Support' section where you can actually get in touch with them – only a help website which details a load of crap that does not relate to my situation. There isn't even an email link, no contact information – nothing. What has really bugged me is there was no communication, no warning just all of a sudden: GONE and I can't get my old username back so now I have to use one with full stops between the words which is far from ideal.
I'm just scared it'll happen again, if there was contact between me and them and I knew what I'd done wrong I wouldn't have a problem and, in that case I'd be more confident about not making the same mistake again – and therefore not loosing everything again.
Try contacting Facebook for Business. All IG ads, etc, are managed directly from FB, and FB owns IG. It sucks it happened but I really don't think anyone would give you the advice to not do it because it might get deleted. Like I said, Nike isn't worried about it, you shouldn't either. Try to get in touch with them and see if you can get answers.
My account wasn't deleted but they did randomly change my password to "protect my account" and I haven't been able to recover/change that password to get into my account. I was able to get in touch with their customer support which was just some guy telling me that I needed to give them my correct email address. I did as they asked but kept getting a very mechanical response telling me that they could not recover my account unless I gave them my email address. I tried giving them my correct email 3 times and kept getting the same response. I ended up starting a new account. If you find a way to recover can you please update this post with how you were able to do it? thanks
Hi, I just added an update to the post, my account is back!
I wasn't sure what email address I actually signed up to Instagram with because I signed up with my Facebook details and then changed my email address in my account a couple of times, when they asked for my email address I signed up with I just sent them an email with the 3x possible addresses that could have been used.
One of them must have been the correct address and then they wanted me to prove my identity by writing all the details on a piece of paper and taking the photo of myself with it.
Hi everyone who is following along or who may have hit the same road block.
GOOD NEWS! My account has been re-activated! I wasn't very hopeful at all of having the situation resolved but after almost two weeks Instagram have re-instated my account.
The only way I could find to contact Instagram was to 'report my account as hacked'. I really wan't hopeful that this route would restore my account because, well, my account technically wasn't hacked. I went through about 3 or 4 emails, getting the standard, robot-like replies.
I was getting one email around about every 24 hours, most likely due to time difference here in Australia. In each email I was asked to provide a little bit more information and I was still loosing hope. This morning however I woke to an email asking me to 'prove my identity' by writing a code, by hand on a piece of paper, along with my full name and username and then having a photo taken of me with that 'sign'.
After emailing the picture of me with my sign I received an email within 6 to 7 hours saying the following:
"Hi,
Your account has been reactivated, and you should be able to access it now. We're sorry for the inconvenience. If you have any further questions, please visit the Help Center:
https://help.instagram.com/"
So good news is that my account is back, super happy about that! Bad news is there was no explanation about what may have happened to cause the account to disappear in the first place. So I can't really say what may have caused my account to stop existing, but hopefully it won't happen again.
First step will be to link it to my Facebook business account which will hopefully make it more 'valuable' to Instagram and less likely for this to happen again.
Hopefully this feed helps someone else out, or better yet this doesn't happen to anyone else.
Insert shameless Plug for my instagram account here: www.instagram.com/onelittletaste
Hi Jonathan, I know this post is from a year ago, but the steps you listed in the comments that resolved the issue are no longer available. Any chance you still have the email address instagram was mailing you from?
Hi Jason – I just had a look but I must have deleted the email. I switched mail programs a while ago and lost a few bits and pieces unfortunately! Hope you can get your issue resolved. Sad times if mistakes are being made that are costing businesses
Ok, well thank you Jonathan, I really appreciate you trying! And yes, sad times indeed! I even tried messaging on FB to no avail. I'm livid at all the time and effort completely down the drain