Instagram is not deleting accounts but a hoax from several months ago again went viral, tricking many people into thinking their accounts would get locked.
“Many people are seeing ‘We’re sorry, we cannot provide News at this time when they refresh their news feed. This is because the Instagram Council is deleting many accounts due to money loss. Repost this and hastag #SaveMyIG2014 to let the Instagram council know that you are an active account,” the post says.
One fake post says, “Many people are seeing ‘We’re sorry, we cannot provide News at this time’ when they refresh their news feed. This is because the Instagram Council is deleting many accounts due to money loss. Repost this and hastag #SaveMyIG2014 to let the Instagram council know that you are an active account.”
“The Instagram Team recently installed new software to update Instagram. When the update corrupted, our team noticed that all our files went missing … every account’s information is now lost,” says another message
It asks users to tag #InstagramsDatabase on Twitter and Instagram.
Neither of these are real
If Instagram were making such sweeping changes, it wouldn’t be spread via a viral message on Facebook and Twitter.
“In fact, the message is just one more incarnation of a long running hoax that falsely claims that a particular online service will delete your account if you do not send on a message. Users of parent company Facebook have been targeted over several years via similar variants of the hoax. More than a decade ago, Hotmail users were told that they must forward a particular email to prove that they were using the service and avoid termination of their account. And, since then, Gmail, Yahoo, WhatsApp, and several other companies have been featured in versions of the hoax,” says Hoax-Slayer.
