Help my son sign up for Instagram
December 19, 2021 8:40 AM   Subscribe

My son has not been able to sign up for Instagram. They keep rejecting / disabling his account without ever letting him in. This is a problem because all his friends organize their social activities in Instagram chat. What should he do to get an account?

He tried to sign up a couple of times using an iCloud-generated temporary email address and Google voice number. Both times his account was flagged as suspicious before he was ever allowed in, and then permanently disabled after 24 when he tried to verify it.

The third time he used his real gmail address and real phone number. This account was also flagged as suspicious. He went through the appeal process which included sending a photograph of himself holding up a piece of paper with a verification code, his account name, and his real name. He never heard back from them and his account continues to be disabled.

All three attempts were made on his MacBook Air using Safari. His phone is an iPhone, but he hasn't used used that during the sign up process except to receive a phone number verification code.

I'm guessing that his first couple of attempts failed because of the use of Google Voice and the one-off iCloud email. Then maybe the third attempt failed because it came from the same IP, or same browser as the first two? The problem is that he's now been rejected with his real email address and real phone number. So how does he get around that?

Things I can think of include:
* Trying again from Chrome.
* Trying to sign up using the Instagram app on his phone.
* Trying to sign up again from some different location with a different IP address.
* All of the above but with a new Gmail address.
* All of the above but with a new phone number (this would be drag)

There's gotta be a way to sign up for Instagram, right? Millions of people do it every day. So what does my son have to do to get an account?
posted by alms to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)
 
Instagram is pretty closely tied to Facebook now; if he has a Facebook account, I wonder if the flag is coming because of a Facebook cookie, or that the Gmail address he tried to sign up with was already used for his Facebook account, and they're trying to push for the "login with Facebook" BS or something.
posted by xedrik at 8:43 AM on December 19, 2021


It sounds like he’s fitting a pattern of behavior that matches “bad actors.”It sounds like he’s tripping a bunch of flags at once, and he probably needs to reduce the number of them.

Definitely try to sign up using the app and a non-throwaway address.
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 8:45 AM on December 19, 2021


This answer is based on intimate knowledge of similar systems at other popular services, but I will say up front that I have no knowledge of how Facebook/Instagram (uh, Meta?) actually handle this.

The abuse detection systems for these services are very complex (and yet, as anyone who uses Instagram can see, not as effective as we might hope...). I'd be willing to bet that a pattern of trying to sign up using throwaway/anonymous/temporary email and phone number will (effectively) forever put that device/browser/IP address into a "suspicious" pool. A LOT of what goes into anti-abuse systems is looking for relationships between bad accounts and unknown accounts, to determine if they might also be bad. And spammers love to use throwaway emails and virtual phone numbers. So by doing that, he may have made himself look like a spammer. That doesn't necessarily mean that it is impossible to successfully sign up in that situation, but it will definitely be much harder. Also, I wouldn't be surprised if now subsequently having used the real email address and phone number from this suspicious device also has now flagged those emails and phone numbers as suspicious (i.e. it looks like the spammer gave up on using throwaway info and is now trying with "legit" info, but it's still the same person). And I'm not sure, but it's possible that signing up from a desktop browser rather than the app (which is overwhelmingly the predominant way to use Instagram) might also raise some flags (not that it would be banned, but it might cause extra scrutiny).

I think the best possible chance of success would be signing up from the mobile app, on a device from which he has never attempted it before, from a network where he has never attempted it before (i.e. don't use your home wifi if the previous banned attempts were done there). And ideally with a different but not throwaway or anonymous email and phone number, though I realize (especially for phone) that that's not necessarily easy. There is still some possibility that if he successfully creates an account he'd end up getting banned again as soon as he logs in from the same IP address or device that the previous failed attempts happen on, but maybe not. It's also possible that they could connect the new account to the banned accounts in some other way, especially if his name is unique, the email addresses are similar, or somewhere in their vast data trawling they have connected any piece of info provided with the new account to any piece of info used on the banned accounts. There are no guarantees.

It's hard for me to predict if signing up for Facebook first would help. If I were forced to guess, I'd actually think that any attempted signup for Facebook would encounter similar difficulties. Instagram has been part of Facebook long enough that they almost surely share some abuse data, if not entirely sharing abuse systems behind the scenes. But these things are complex and always changing, so maybe it would be successful, and maybe it would work.
posted by primethyme at 9:10 AM on December 19, 2021 [5 favorites]


maybe try using a vpn to get away from your ip address if that's causing the problem
posted by kokaku at 9:16 AM on December 19, 2021


I would definitely not use a VPN; most consumer/shared VPN endpoints are almost assuredly known to Instagram/Meta and will be flagged.

First, I would wait a couple of days. The algorithm may have a time limit, or some time-variant component that decreases over time.

I would do a DHCP release/renew on your home router, which will get a new IP address, hopefully a "clean" one.

Using a different computer and browser than he was using before is probably not a bad idea. Incognito Mode would probably work too, because it results in a different browser fingerprint than the normal mode.

Then I would go through the signup process again, preferably using a "real" email address (not a throwaway, one-time-use, or address you typically use for spammy stuff) and "real" phone number (definitely not a Google Voice number). Don't reuse any of the email addresses or phone numbers that have previously been used.

And if possible, I would come up with a different username than he has previously been trying to create, and make sure it doesn't look "spammy". My experience is that spammy accounts on IG generally have a bunch of numbers at the end of them, so don't do that. This is probably the weakest suggestion, though.

My guess is that will work.

The other option would be for you (assuming you have an IG account) to create an alt account and let him use it. Instagram is constantly asking me if I'd like to create a second account to "keep up with a smaller group of friends" or something like that. It seems like it would be pretty trivial to create a secondary account and then give the login credentials to a family member. I have not tried this myself, though, so it would be my last-ditch option.
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:43 AM on December 19, 2021 [2 favorites]


No talk of cookie management and clear user profiles? Those prior attempts will have left some mark on his systems and either they can be cleared down or should expire in 28 days.

If parental assistance is useful, creating an account for him on another device and then logging in on his cleared-cookie machine.
posted by k3ninho at 2:59 PM on December 19, 2021


Aren't Instagram Chat and Facebook Messenger interoperable now? I believe you can sign up for just Messenger—not Instagram, not Facebook.

Might be worth a try.
posted by vitout at 9:46 AM on December 20, 2021


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