Making the rounds on Reddit is a confusing post from a supposed Instacart shopper. It’s a series of screenshots that show an exchange between the shopper and the account holder who placed the order. Then a third person claiming to be the legitimate account holder popped in and said to cancel the order.
“It’s like the movie Split,” one commenter noted, referencing the film’s antagonist switching between multiple personalities.
The original account holder claimed to be the dad, but was supposedly a scammer that got into the account and illegally ordered groceries in Miami, even when the account is based in Michigan.
The Instacart shopper later noted on Reddit that Instacart customer support canceled the order. The company wasn’t immediately available to confirm the interaction, but other posters noted that they experienced similar incidents.
The exchange is a graphic reminder that internet scams and hacks are a growing threat, and protecting yourself is more important than ever. That’s particularly critical with streaming services, where accounts – and their passwords – are often shared across households and multiple people. It’s likely the scammer got into that Instacart account by obtaining the same password through another hack, if it didn’t come from an Instacart data breach.
Cybercrime is a big problem. More than half of all consumers have experienced one, with one in three falling victim in 2021, according to security company Norton. The FBI said it received more than 15,400 internet crime complaints related to tech support fraud in 2020 alone.
Sharing your streaming service password, and even worse, using that same password across different accounts, leaves you vulnerable to these kinds of cyberattacks.
While Netflix’s limit on password sharing elicited a lot of backlash, the upside was it cracked down on a practice that has led to a rise in so-called phishing scams, or scammer emails that try to get you to reply with sensitive personal information.
So here’s your PSA and reminder to change your passwords frequently, and use different passwords for your different accounts. And if you have to share your streaming password with friends and family, making sure it’s a unique password and that you lock down just how it spreads.
The safety of not just your streaming account, but your bank, credit card or insurance accounts, could be at stake.