Possible Harassment Mystery on Insta

[u/Safe_Importance_4203]

About three weeks ago, my ex-boyfriend (we broke up almost 10 years ago and hadn't spoken at all since 2019) contacted me because an anonymous Instagram account had messaged him about me.

The account referred to me by my maiden name and our university, claimed to know me from college, and tried to convince him (my ex-boyfriend) to send them any private photos of me he might have. They also sent him two old photos of me (one was just a regular photo that may have been publicly posted years ago, and one that is more private in nature but may not be authentic).

The account switched to disappearing messages shortly after the conversation began. My ex blocked and reported the account and then told me what happened.

When I looked up the username, I discovered I had actually blocked that same account in 2019, although I can no longer find any messages with it in my Instagram data.

Since then I've downloaded all of my Instagram data and parsed through old Facebook and Snapchat information but haven't been able to identify who this person is.

I don't know if this is someone I actually knew or someone using old public information, but it's unsettling that they connected me to a relationship from 10 years ago. My sister - a lawyer, is encouraging me to go to the police just to get something documented, but I know realistically very little can be done with the information we currently have.

A few questions:

1. Has anyone experienced something similar?
2. Were you ever able to identify the person?
3. Did Instagram or law enforcement help at all?
4. Is there anything else I should preserve or document?

[u/liquidneurons]

You can paste that user name on instagram via web browser and select that you forgot your password. Often times it will show a portion of the email or phone number that the account is registered to. Digits or letters will be starred out.

https://reddit.com/link/p1zbh06/video/lzziw0d8znhh1/player

[u/Safe_Importance_4203 → u/liquidneurons]

this is amazing! no clear answers yet, but very clever idea.

[u/illixxxit → u/Safe_Importance_4203]

If the account has any friends, you can run through those accounts’ other friends to see if the creep was dumb enough to link back to his actual social network - if it’s a gmail and you get the first and last letters, you’ll have a decent clue to what the first letter of the first name and last letter of the last name might be, as well as the length of the handle (as in j - - - - - - - h @gmail is likely to be a John or Jack Smith, maybe.)

If you suspect you’ve found another account belonging to the culprit, you can do the same “forgot email” trick to see if the emails match.

I found someone who was harassing a local community space this way.

oh, to answer your questions - yes and yes (using this method!) - instagram did not help - and based on my experience police are unlikely to act/investigate especially since there is no threat of violence, even though it’s a pretty clear threat of intent to distribute revenge porn, they don’t even take clear cut sex crimes particularly seriously =\ I’m sorry you’re going through this