Instagram identity theft – Is it criminal? – How to protect from Instagram identity theft – Instagram impersonanation account

A friend of mine represents a client who has been the victim of Instagram identity theft.  Specifically, someone opened a similar account and claimed he was him.  Instagram has agreed to freeze the perp’s account, but due to its privacy policy, will not divulge any of the sign-up or account info.

Is there a way to get the info of this false account?  Is it criminal?  Can Instagram help?

First of all, Instagram won’t help as per its privacy policy.  However, if there is a good faith belief that divulging information is required by law to prevent fraud or other illegal activity, then the wrongdoer’s info will be an open book.  In the case of my friend’s client, the police says this is not a criminal act so that prevents Instagram from divulging any personal info of the perp here.

If you see another account impersonating yours, you can report this to Instagram.  Then, to take matters further and request further information, a search warrant, court order, or valid subpoena will need to be issued.  That means that the police will need to feel this is a criminal act first.  But, what do you do if you cannot get the act labelled as criminal?

Well, it’s not easy to track down the personal information of an impersonator.  Doing so it sort of an illegal act since that goes against the privacy policy of Instagram.  Kind of backwards-thinking, right?  If you have a hunch of who the person is, you may type the name in Wink which will scour the social networking sites for this person.  Other than that, there’s not much else to do within the legal realm.  Of course, a private online investigator may be hired.

This is definitely disturbing as such a case could be clogged up in the legal system with endless fees later.  There needs to be clear laws on what is legal online and what is not.  Otherwise, computer viruses, IT security issues, and identity theft will continue to be on the rise.