
How Instagram closed my account and gave it to a football celebrity - javiercr
https://medium.com/@ainiesta/how-instagram-closed-my-account-and-gave-it-to-a-football-celebrity-625a6a770eb3
======
xenadu02
GitHub did the same thing to me. Changed my SSH keys and renamed my account. I
used to have "rbishop", now some other developer has it.

No notice, no communication, nothing.

When I contacted the person at GitHub who did it he refused to answer any
questions or explain anything.

So watch out... If you have the same name as an employee's drinking buddy,
prepare to have your account removed without notice or explanation.

~~~
lsaferite
Was your account inactive by chance?

They have rules that after an account is inactive for a significant amount of
time it is subject to removal.

I know this because I reclaimed a VERY inactive account. It had one repo that
was forked years previously and never had any updates. And the user never
contributed to any repos or anything. No activity of any type in years. So, I
contacted GH support asking about the account and they removed the account and
told me I could register it if I was fast.

~~~
Domenic_S
> _I know this because I reclaimed a VERY inactive account._

IIRC, activity on private repos isn't exposed on the user's page. Is it
possible for a non-employee to tell the difference between a truly inactive
account and one that has activity on only private repos?

~~~
lsaferite
And this is why I asked if the account was inactive and deletable. A staff
member checked the account and confirmed that the account was inactive and
deleted it so it could be reclaimed.

------
tristanho
From the Instagram TOS[1]: "5\. We reserve the right to force forfeiture of
any username for any reason."

Not saying that this isn't terrible customer service by Instagram, and they
definitely should have given better notice, but when you agree to these terms
of service you accept that THEY OWN your username... You signed up for this;
it shouldn't be a surprise that they actually have these terms for a reason.

[1]
[https://help.instagram.com/478745558852511](https://help.instagram.com/478745558852511)

~~~
eridal
TIL Github can terminate your account, for any reason, at any time ..

    
    
        GitHub, in its sole discretion, has the right to 
        suspend or terminate your account and refuse any 
        and all current or future use of the Service, or 
        any other GitHub service, for any reason at any time. 
        Such termination of the Service will result in the 
        deactivation or deletion of your Account or your 
        access to your Account, and the forfeiture and 
        relinquishment of all Content in your Account. 
        GitHub reserves the right to refuse service to 
        anyone for any reason at any time.
    

[https://help.github.com/articles/github-terms-of-
service/#d-...](https://help.github.com/articles/github-terms-of-
service/#d-cancellation-and-termination)

~~~
driverdan
All companies have a termination clause to protect themselves.

------
javiercr
I am not the author of the post but I thought it was interesting because it's
related to something I've been thinking for a while: the "namespace" for
humans is quite limited.

World's population grow fast and practically no new first or last names have
been introduced in the last years, therefore the chances of having another
person with your exact same first and last names and more exposure than you is
growing exponentially. Plus, thanks to the Internet, if someone with name X
does something "remarkable" that name X will be associated to that individual
forever, creating a "digital shadow" over those future individuals with the
same name.

I remember someone who had my exact same first and last name, and he had
bought the domain [fist_name][last_name].com ... The annoying problem was that
person was also a developer and his website was awful. I was always worried
that someone could google me, find his site and, as he was a developer too,
think that poor site was mine.

~~~
dominotw
>World's population grow fast and practically no new first or last names have
been introduced in the last years, therefore the chances of having another
person with your exact same first and last names and more exposure than you is
growing exponentially.

I plan to give my child a new last name for this reason so he/she could have
unique google hit. But I am not sure what the legal implications of this are.

~~~
jader201
Are you sure you (or your kid, for that matter) would want them to be that
accessible on a Google search? Seems that could come back to bite them.

I say that because my name is pretty unique -- most hits on my name are
relevant to me -- and I have to be very careful about anything I make public.
Even more so than most probably have to be.

Fortunately, I'm a pretty boring person and it's not been much a problem.

~~~
ghaff
I have somewhat mixed feelings about having a unique [1] first/last name pair.

The bad case IMO is sharing an unusual but not unique pairing with someone who
you really don't want to be confused with. Back pre-web, a friend of mine in
NYC shared a name with someone who was involved in a fairly serious local
baseball scandal. My friend received everything up to and including death
threats on his voicemail.

[1] According to "deep web" searches, not entirely but the one or two other
cases have no web presence and may well be deceased.

~~~
pavel_lishin
The uniqueness of my name has yet to bite me in the ass. I'm sure there are
other Pavel Lishins (Pavels Lishin?) in Russia and Eastern Europe, but I
appear to be the only one on this half of the globe.

------
ryanlol
The modern policy of no customer support by these services is a little
worrying.

I'm in a similar situation with google suspending my gmail account because I
tried to make play store purchases while traveling (apparently this is a
"suspicious access pattern").

Now I'm out 5 years worth of emails and have no way of contacting google
(Despite being a paying google apps customer and registered on their payroll
system). Frankly, I'd rather like to be able to pay to receive some support
from these companies.

Oh well, at least they made my emails bounce.

tl;dr why don't web companies offer paid support to their users?

~~~
djrogers
See, you're confused - you actually think you're a customer of these
companies.

I'd venture to guess that they do have customer service, but you do t fall in
to the customer category. Now if you started a $100,000 'branding campaign'
with them- the you'd be a customer.

~~~
ryanlol
I pay for gmail, I pay for drive, I pay for adwords, I pay for google apps, I
pay for GCE and play store. (and undoubtedly a plethora of other services I
couldn't remember)

I think I fit at least some definition of "customer".

And I'm still not asking for free support, I'd gladly pay Google 2k an hour to
get someone to assist me.

~~~
morganvachon
You're paying to be a power user, and you're still not a customer in Google's
eyes. As the parent said, the only true customers are the advertisers who buy
your information and eyeballs from Google.

~~~
teddyh
I’m beginning to think that Google is too large to have actual customers, per
se, since _any_ group of paying users is still too small for Google to need to
pay attention to.

------
planetjones
Terrible stuff by Instagram. Iniesta the footballer already has a very
successful (5.4 million followers) account on Twitter using the handle
andresiniesta8. It looks like versions 1-7 have been deleted. However the guy
who wrote the article already has a Twitter account using ainiesta, which
clearly isn't one of these imitation or mock accounts. The footballer hasn't
moved Instagram handles, but it does look like Instagram are directing the
author's alias to the footballer's existing account. Awful.

~~~
SuperKlaus
fyi, it's "8" cause that's the number on his jersey.

~~~
jpindar
And using a combination of their name and jersey number as a username is very
common among athletes, it doesn't mean they couldn't get just the name.

------
covercash
This happened to my friend's wife a few years ago - an Instagram employee
hijacked her username: [https://medium.com/@behoff/they-say-nothing-will-
change-5c54...](https://medium.com/@behoff/they-say-nothing-will-
change-5c546662abc0)

After being picked up by some of the bigger tech sites, they returned the
username to her.

------
tzs
The Instagram FAQs on their site say that account names are first come, first
serve.

They say that if the name you want is on an account that seems inactive you
should consider periods, numbers, underscores, or abbreviations to come up
with an available name.

They say he violated their terms of service. I took a quick look at the TOS,
and don't see anything that having the same name as a celebrity and using your
name for your Instagram account would violate. I suppose it is possible that
he violated some other term completely unrelated to this whole name thing, and
that's why he got kicked off, and then they gave it to the football player
even though the football player already had an established, verified, active
Instagram account using the same name he uses for his verified Twitter
account.

There is one TOS term that his name could be construed as violating, if one
were take a ridiculous reading of the term. That's Basic Term 12: "You must
not use domain names or web URLs in your username without prior written
consent from Instagram". The football player has the andresiniesta.es domain.
If we take "domain name" in the rule to include the domain name with the TLD
portion removed, then any username with the string "andresiniesta" in it would
be covered.

------
ceasarby
I went to Instagram address he mentions and looks like all photos are still
there. I'm not sure how designer guy looks like, but it's definitely not
football players' headshot:
[https://instagram.com/ainiesta/](https://instagram.com/ainiesta/)

~~~
clamprecht
Maybe Instagram restored it (once they were outed)?

~~~
mansilladev
We'll never know the whole story. I'm sure it's too damn embarrassing.

------
e_proxus
I had a similar thing happening to me. Friends were traveling and shared their
photos on Instagram, so I decided to log in to my old account which I hadn't
accessed in a few years.

On the web page, it says "Your username or password was incorrect." Upon
trying to recover my password with my email address I get " That e-mail
address or username doesn't have an associated user account. Are you sure
you've registered?" When trying with my username instead I get "Sorry, this
user is not active."

I decided to try to login with the app, and there I got a message basically
stating that my account was disabled because of not following the Terms and
Conditions (same as OPs, don't remember the exact wording in English). They
don't tell you what you did to break those conditions. They do tell you
however, that there is no possible way to contact them or to get your account
back. All your images are gone, your friends can't follow or contact you again
and there is no way you can reactivate the account or get access to the user
name. No email was ever sent notifying me of this happening, ever.

Worst "customer" experience ever.

~~~
driverdan
> I decided to log in to my old account which I hadn't accessed in a few
> years.

If you hadn't logged in for a few years why would you expect it to still be
open? It's a perfectly reasonable policy to recapture unused accounts.

~~~
scintill76
So, who defines "unused account"? I mean, I see your point in this instance,
but who wants the chore of logging in to all their accounts every 6 months (or
more often?) just to avoid losing them? What if merely logging in becomes "not
using it enough" for some services?

------
Fastidious
Assuming Instagram is behind this, it is bad business to do that. Instagram by
itself is nothing, it's users are what made the service, and showing a lack of
respect for them it is their worse publicity.

------
z3t4
One part of Internet's success is that it's decentralized.

startup idea: Make it easy for "normal" people to have their own "Instagram"
or blog.

~~~
twic
It wouldn't be Hacker News if the one genuinely good comment wasn't downvoted
:/.

A friend made the same true, idealistic, and completely impossible proposal on
his blog:

[http://frabjousdei.net/post/108191939171/rfcs-not-
ipos](http://frabjousdei.net/post/108191939171/rfcs-not-ipos)

------
notjimhalpert
It seems like he should be at least notified before they seized his account,
though.

~~~
ceasarby
What could be the grounds of taking account away from him? This guys is not a
spammer, everyone who sees photos there can figure it's not a football player,
but different Andreas Iniesta. Football guy could get verified account with
nickname Iniesta official or smth. Very sad story, I feel for the poor guy :(

------
davidcollantes
He got his account back. Instagram is sorry[0].

[0]
[http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-33592599](http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-33592599)

------
leeleelee
If we operate under the assumption that with free services like facebook,
twitter, instagram, gmail, etc -- can and will delete our content and revoke
access to the service without warning at any point in time -- doesn't that
make the service somewhat useless?

Most users operate under the assumption that there is some sort of guarantee
that their account will continue to exist and they will have a consistent day-
to-day experience. That is a BIG part that makes the service actually
"useful".

~~~
tracker1
What bugs me is when a service changes, and you lose your own name... Not
talking my given/family name, but the online handle I've used since before the
web is "tracker1" ... that was my alias on my google profile (before the
switch to google+), and it still hasn't been offered back... half the first to
pages of results on google's own search refer to my profile on other sites...
it's irksome.

------
shkkmo
The thing I find oddest here is that the his friends are now set as following
the new account of the football player. Seems like at the very least there is
a bug that needs to be fixed there.

I restrict access to my instagram account to approved followers. Now I wonder
if someone could take over an handle of one of my friends and then have access
to my posts.

~~~
tsotha
>The thing I find oddest here is that the his friends are now set as following
the new account of the football player. Seems like at the very least there is
a bug that needs to be fixed there.

I doubt it's a bug. Someone probably complained saying something like "Hey,
this guy isn't Andres Iniesta. Someone's squatting on his name to get extra
hits." If that's the case anyone following that account must have meant to
follow the athlete.

They should have contacted the author first, of course, but companies offering
free services don't have the money for customer support.

------
planetjones
Looks like he's back in business:

 _5 hours after writing this article, my account has been restored, but still
no news from Instagram about what happened or an apology._

------
_pdp_
Well my twitter handle is @pdp and there is a political party in Nigeria also
named PDP. There is also this thing called "personal development plan". In
other words, I need twitter spam filter because people don't know the
difference between @ and #. Anyway, if you don't want to get in trouble just
come up with a super unique username. Do the same for your personal site and
your business site.

------
fixxer
Well, I'm not going to sign up for Instagram. Wankers. Smells like desperation
when companies are willing to alienate their core like this.

------
cordite
It is shameful that it was done, but at the root, it seems to come down to:
what is the product, and who are the users being swapped to who is the
product, and what are the users.

Free services seem easier to hit critical mass with a low barrier to entry,
yet unless it is a paid-by-end-users service, end users seem to get trampled
like this.

------
Zaheer
Same thing happened to me. The trend of larger online services having non-
existent customer support worries me.

------
giancarlostoro
What really weirds me out is why didn't they go for his full name instead of a
shortened version? If it was the PR team, they could have a better time
telling people to follow him on Twitter (edit: I mean Instagram) based on his
full name wouldn't they? Weird.

------
ypcx
And this while thousands or more spam bot accounts are added daily, and while
Instagram could easily ask or force the user to change is handle. Anyway, good
to know.

------
oldmanjay
The hyperbole of the talk of violated rights took my sympathy about down to
zero. It's a shitty move on Instagram's part to be sure, but I don't think
even the most European of Europe's governments defends the right to the
Instagram account name of your choice.

~~~
venomsnake
But probably have the right to not get your IP destroyed. And just transfer
the account once it is created.

~~~
adzicg
This is assuming that instagram held the only copy of those pictures (so loss
leads to IP being destroyed). I doubt anyone would keep the only copy of any
serious IP on a third-party free service. (just to make things clear - I'm not
defending instagram, but deleting photos on a service users don't pay for can
hardly be called 'destroying IP')

~~~
jsprogrammer
Instagram's TOS probably gives it an explicit, perpetual license to your IP.

------
intrasight
Get a new Instagram account. It is a free service.

~~~
Fastidious
The worse advise. If anything, he should just keep away from Instagram and
never go back.

~~~
intrasight
I disagree. If one finds a service valuable, it continues to be valuable if
you have a new username. I am not excusing Instagram's behaviour. But I am
pointing out the fallacy in believing that you own your username.

~~~
leeleelee
For the service to be valuable, users are led to believe that when they create
a username and a password for themselves, their username will not simply
disappear and access revoked at any point in time. That would be quite a
useless service wouldn't it?

~~~
morganvachon
Indeed, especially for a service like Instagram, your identity is your entire
reason for using the service. By taking away the article author's username,
they also took the entire account away, including any content he posted. For
most users this represents months or years of interactions and activity they
can never get back. Depending on how much they use the service, their entire
online identity could potentially be lost.

~~~
intrasight
Outsourcing your identity to a company that treats you as the product - good
luck with that.

