What I Want The Person Who Hacked My Friend's Account To Know

By Larissa Martin

I have dealt with Instagram hackers multiple times, and usually it’s not too hard, but I also know that it can ruin lives.

Someone hacked me a few months ago, and it got me thinking about how social media hackers should use their skills for good.

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Over the summer, a friend sent me a message asking me to vote for his small business in a competition. I did all of the steps he asked me to do because I was happy to support a friend’s business. I thought nothing of his request.

Unfortunately, I shouldn’t have voted. Why?

Just a few hours later, my friends started sending me tons of messages saying that they thought someone had hacked my account. I tried to get my account back — with no luck at first.

After many failed attempts to get my old account unhacked, I did the next best thing: I set up a new account. I told all of my friends to immediately stop following my old account and follow the new one instead.

Eventually, I got my old account back — but I know that I was one of the lucky ones.

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I’m so glad that everything worked out for me, but that’s not the case for everyone.

For instance, someone recently hacked one of my friends’ accounts, and my friend lost everything. She lost photos that she can never get back, but she also lost potential clients for her business.

My friend lost a huge part of her livelihood — all because some hackers thought it was funny to mess with her account.

The hackers may have thought that they had nothing to lose and they wouldn’t hurt anyone, but the reality is that their victims had everything to lose.

I want hackers to think about what would happen if someone hacked their accounts in a way that they couldn’t fix. They would lose all of their information, and they would be powerless to stop it.

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If they started (ethical) hacking businesses and used their accounts to promote themselves, with an “innocent” hack into their accounts.

Their livelihoods would disappear, and though they might be able to re-establish themselves online, they might not even know where to start after years of hard work washed down the drain.

It doesn’t feel good, and I wish they could see how high-quality hacking could ruin their own lives too.

If hackers used their talents in tech settings and for important work, they could create real lasting change to better society as a whole and weed out some of the world’s worst villains.

Getting hacked on social media can cause irreparable damage to people’s reputations and livelihoods, and I wish social media hackers could be more aware of just how much damage they can cause. I can only hope that they choose to change their ways.

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Larissa Martin is a writer whose work has been featured on MSN, Yahoo Lifestyle, Thrive Global, Unwritten, YourTango, and The Mighty.

This article was originally published at Unwritten. Reprinted with permission from the author.