Instagram announces a new way to tackle phishing scam on the platform

After launching an anti-bullying feature called Restrict , Instagram has now announced that it will now actively help users identify phishing scams. The tool will help users to stay away from hackers that send emails posing as Instagram.

Instagram says that starting today, in the app settings users will be able to see a list of all the emails Instagram sent to them in the previous two weeks. This will help the users distinguish genuine emails from fake ones.

To enable the tool you could head to app Settings>Security. There will now appear ‘Emails from Instagran’, which will have two new tabs in it. One will display all the emails sent to a user in the last two weeks related to account security and login, while the other will show all emails sent by the company not related to account security during the same time period.

The same settings will also be available on the desktop version of the app.

Heads up: Today, we’re launching a new feature to help people identify phishing emails claiming to be from Instagram. This account security feature (accessed through Settings) allows anyone to check if an email claiming to be from Instagram is genuine. pic.twitter.com/3UE5kSypM6

— Instagram (@instagram) October 7, 2019

At the time of writing the story, the tool was not available in Instagram Settings on the app running on iOS 13.

While phishing scams — when a notorious hacker poses into making you believe they are someone else to steal data or even money from you — aren’t a very new tactic, scammer are just getting really good at it, and sometimes make it very difficult for a user to distinguish between real and fake.