What To Do If Someone is Impersonating You on Instagram

Instagram is a fun place to keep updated with friends and add filters to your latest pictures. It’s a place where we can see someone’s life or hobbies showcased to keep in touch with that person. However, romance scammers use this platform to catfish their victims and make the victims fall in love with them. This means that romance scammers find a way to steal photos and personalities from public Instagram accounts that don’t have as much of a following. If you think that your photos and personality have been stolen, these are some tips on what to do if someone is impersonating you on Instagram.

What To Do if Someone Is Impersonating You on Instagram

Report the Impersonating Fake Account to Instagram

If you go to the fake profile, you should see three dots in the upper right-hand corner. Click the dots to reveal a drop-down menu. In the menu, click “Report Profile” and follow the steps. Once you tap that someone is pretending to be you, it will take you to a section where you can report an impersonation account. Make sure to have evidence that this account is impersonating you, such as screenshots, links, comments, or messages.

Make a few more selections in this section which should lead you to take a photo of yourself with your ID, proving that it’s really you. However, make sure that your name in your Instagram profile matches the real name on your ID before moving forward with this process. Once you do this, Instagram should remove the account within minutes. If there was an issue removing the fake profile, Instagram will email you and let you know.

Report the Fake Account to the FTC

The FTC will help report the fake account to the FBI if someone is impersonating you while also committing crimes, such as stealing money or people’s information. All you need to do is go to the FTC’s website and click “Report Now.” Once you do that, you will be able to fill out the form with what happened in your situation.

Once the FTC receives your form, they will send you a guide with the next steps to follow. They will also report the fake profile to the FBI for further investigation. They might contact you with further questions to help the investigation and will educate others based on the reports they get.

Put Watermarks of Your Username on Your Photos

By putting watermarks of your username on your photos, you prevent others from stealing your photos. This is because when other people were to see your watermarked photos on someone else’s profile, it will have a watermark stating the true username of who the photos actually belong to.

However, you should be careful as to where you put the watermark on the photo. Put the watermark in the center of your photo if you can. If you put the watermark toward the edges of the photo, it could be easily cropped out by the scammer so that they can still use your photo.

Reverse Search the Username to See Who’s Pretending to Be You

At Social Catfish, we want to help you verify the identities of those who might seem suspicious to you. If you have their name, email address, phone number, social media username, or image, you can reverse search and see who the suspected person was that you’ve been in contact with when figuring out what to do if someone is impersonating you on Instagram.