Fact Check: That copyright infringement message on Instagram, FB is fake

Actor Adil Hussain recently received a direct message on Instagram informing him that copyright infringement has been detected on his last post made on the photo-sharing app. We would like to inform our readers that it might be a well-organised phishing scam to access your personal information.

Claim

"Instagram | Copyright Violation

Hello, Dear User

Your account is protected by copyright. Let's pay attention to our shares. When we reviewed your account today, we have disabled some features in your account because your last post contains copyrighted content. Copyright is very important to us; If no objection is made within 24 hours, your account will be deleted! If you believe this is an error, please submit an appeal notice. It will be reviewed by our appeal manager and returned to you," read the direct message that Adil Hussain received on Instagram.

The actor was taken aback with this particular message and informed Instagram by tagging its official handle on Twitter expressing his surprise that he hasn't posted anything that violates any copyright.

"Dear @instagram I received this message on my Instagram DM today... Is this legit or is it a hoax? Because I haven't posted anything which violets any copyright. Please reply," Adil Hussain tweeted.

Verifying the claims

After doing some digging around it, we have found that the particular message asks the recipient to provide feedback by redirecting them to a URL 'instagramhelpnotice.com'. It may appear like an official Instagram page when viewed from a mobile device.

The recipient will then be asked to follow a couple of steps to login into their account by entering their username and password.

This is a well-thought-out process of the scammers to get access to your email address if you fall for it by providing your login credentials.

The main target here is your email address which contains sensitive information that is widely used for verification and recovering passwords.

In the final step, the recipients will be asked to enter their email address and once they provide it, they will be redirected to Instagram homepage tricking them to believe that everything is normal. However, doing so, you might handover your Instagram username, password and your email address into the hands of the scammer.

How to tackle?

If you observe closely, the copyright infringement message that you have received via direct message will be filled with grammatical mistakes as you go through these steps.

The idea is to avoid logging in into any site (which might appear as an official page) that isn't hosted at Instagram's official domain name which would be 'Instagram.com'.

Beware and be safe and try not to fall victim to such scammers.