Common Instagram Scams and How to Avoid Scammers

Key Takeaways

• Instagram scams use social engineering techniques to trick users into sharing personal information, sending money or compromising their accounts.
• Common scams include fake brand accounts, investment fraud, phishing messages and fraudulent giveaways.
• Learning to recognise warning signs can help employees avoid scams both inside and outside the workplace.
• Good cyber hygiene, including strong passwords and multi-factor authentication, helps protect Instagram accounts from compromise.
• Regular cyber security awareness training equips employees to identify and respond to social engineering attacks across social media platforms.

Instagram remains one of the world’s most popular social media platforms, with more than 2 billion monthly active users. While its huge global audience makes it a great place to connect with friends, creators and businesses, it also makes it an attractive target for cybercriminals looking to exploit unsuspecting users.

By hiding behind fake profiles, cloned accounts and convincing messages, scammers can impersonate trusted individuals or brands, trick people into sending money, steal login credentials, or harvest personal information for identity theft. These scams can spread rapidly as malicious posts, direct messages and fake promotions are shared across the platform.

To help you stay protected, we’ve created this guide covering the most common Instagram scams in 2026, how to spot the warning signs, and the practical steps you can take to keep your account and personal information safe.

Common Instagram Scams

Fake Brand Accounts

Fake accounts remain a persistent challenge across social media platforms. Cybercriminals regularly create convincing profiles that impersonate well-known brands, influencers and businesses to build trust before attempting to steal personal information or money.

Free Instagram Followers and Likes

The popularity of influencer marketing has created new opportunities for fraudsters, who frequently advertise fake follower services or impersonate legitimate marketing companies to target creators and businesses.

Fake Investment Scams

Investment scams are among the fastest-growing forms of online fraud, with criminals increasingly using Instagram and other social media platforms to lure victims with promises of high returns. According to Report Fraud, UK victims lost £879.8 million to investment fraud in 2025—equivalent to £2.4 million every day—while reports of investment scams increased by 31% compared with the previous year.

Fake Giveaways

Whilst there are many legitimate giveaways and promotions on Instagram, there are also a lot of fraudulent ones promising non-existent prizes. Scammers usually mimic big brand names and request that you like, share or comment on the post to be in with a chance of winning. The real aim is to harvest your personal information or to get you to follow their account to add credibility to their scam.

Phishing Scam

There are lots of different types of phishing scams on Instagram. Common scams involve phishing emails that ask users to click on a link, verify activity on their account, or submit personal information. If a scammer gains access to your account, they can steal your personal information or change your password and lock you out. Direct messages are also increasingly being used by cybercriminals to push malware.

Signs of an Instagram Scam

• Messages that appear to come from a friend or a company you know asking you to click on a suspicious link.
• A message from someone you don’t know requesting money or bank account details.
• Someone claiming to be from Instagram security asking you to provide account information, or to verify your account.
• Accounts representing large companies or public figures that are not verified.
• People or accounts asking you to claim a prize.
• A request to move your conversation off Instagram to a less public and less secure setting.
• Messages or posts with poor spelling and grammatical mistakes.
• People who misrepresent where they are located.

Top Tips to Avoid Instagram Scams

• Don’t click on suspicious links: Instagram will never ask users to click on a link to update their personal details. To check if a request is legitimate, go directly to the ‘Emails from Instagram’ tab and you’ll see a list of all the official emails that Instagram has sent you within the last 14 days and what email address they were from.
• Make your account private: Instagram accounts are set to public by default so to ensure that only friends can view your posts, you should make your account private. Only approved followers will be able to find your posts through search, see which posts you’ve liked, or send you direct messages.
• Enable two-factor authentication: Two-factor authentication provides an extra layer of defence in securing your accounts. If you enable this on your account, Instagram will text you a unique code for logging in.
• Disable activity status: Instagram has a feature that allows people you follow or have direct conversations with to see when you were last active on Instagram. To protect your privacy, go into ‘Settings’ and turn off ‘Activity Status’.
• Check login activity: To check if your account has been hacked, go into ‘Settings’ and click on ‘Login Activity’. This page will provide you with a list of all the locations where you’ve logged in with your account. If there are any locations that you don’t recognise, this could indicate that your account has been compromised by a scammer. You should immediately log out and change your password.
• Block accounts: If someone is harassing you or posting inappropriate content, you can manually block them. Open the three-dot menu on the account and select ‘Block’. It’s also worth reporting the account to Instagram. If they find that the account, comment, or video has breached its terms of service, the account will be suspended.
• Do your research: If you’re unsure if an account is legitimate or not, you can go into their profile and select ‘About this Account’. Instagram will show you when the user joined the platform, where they’re located if they’re running any ads, if they’ve made any username changes, or if they have accounts with shared followers. If something doesn’t seem quite right, you can then block and report the user.
• Keep a close eye on third-party apps: It can be easy to lose track of all the third-party apps you have connected to your Instagram account. Whilst the vast majority are safe, you may have unintentionally installed a rogue app that is harvesting your data for malicious purposes. If you go into ‘Settings’, you can view active and expired authorised apps and then remove or grant access to the services you want.
• Check if accounts are verified: If you’re buying products from what appears to be a big brand account, check that the account is verified with a blue tick. Suspicions should be raised if a seller is offering expensive products for low prices or if they have strange payment methods.

Strengthen Defences Against Instagram Scams Using Advanced Phishing Simulations

Instagram scams are just one example of the social engineering tactics cybercriminals use to target employees every day. Book a demo to see how MetaCompliance’s Advanced Phishing Simulation and Security Awareness Training help organisations build awareness, reduce human risk and strengthen their first line of defence against cyber threats.