American photo and video sharing social networking service, Instagram has offered tips on how users can protect themselves from phishing and scams.
  
Instagram said account safety and helping the community keep their accounts secure is extremely important to it. From security checkup to reporting tools, Instagram listed five key steps that can help keep users account secure.
  
These are security checkup; enabling two-factor authentication; enabling login request; updating phone number and email; Instagram doesn’t send a DM and users should report content and accounts found questionable.
    
On the security checkup, Instagram disclosed that the security checkup will guide people, whose accounts may have been hacked, through the steps needed to secure them. This includes checking login activity, reviewing profile information, confirming the accounts that share login information and updating account recovery contact information such as phone number or email.
  
Instagram strongly recommends setting up two-factor authentication, which is a security feature that helps protect users’ account and password. The platform explained that having two-factor authentication means users will receive a notification or be asked to enter a special login code when someone tries logging into the account from a device not recognized.
  
The American firm reminded users that when setting up two-factor authentication on Instagram, “you’ll receive an alert whenever someone tries to log in to your account from a device or web browser we don’t recognize. These alerts will tell the user, which device tried logging in and where it’s located. You can approve or deny the request immediately from the already logged in devices. Users can also view the list of devices that have recently logged into your Instagram account at any time under “Settings,” “Security,” “Login Activity.” If you don’t recognize a recent login, you can log out of that location or device and let us know that the login wasn’t you.”
   
Instagram urged users to always update their phone number and email, saying that if something happens to the user account, “we can reach you. These steps let you recover your account even if your info has been changed by a hacker.”
    
According to the firm, Instagram will never send a DM. It reported that over the past few months, they have seen a rise in malicious accounts DMing people to try and access sensitive information like account passwords.