when instagram disabled my account

Last Saturday morning I was lying in bed, loving the fact that I didn't have to be anywhere anytime soon, sipping my coffee and reading the last couple of pages of my book. If I listened carefully I could hear the sounds of the girls slowly waking up, Bren and a friend using power tools in the shed and the birds calling to each other through the forest. I was warm and content in my little bubble as I reached for my phone to have a look at what the rest of the world was up to.

I started with the comments that had come through in response to my blog posted the day before. Thoughts on sock knitting, bowl carving, dealing with difficult shop keepers... I love the way your comments keep the conversation going. Like my blog is not a static piece of writing but an ongoing collaboration, a conversation.

And then I read a few asking me about my Instagram account. Where was it? Had I decided to have a break from social media? Had I deleted it?

Of course I clicked over straight away sure that my photos would be right where I had left them the day before when I'd posted a picture of a little tea party we'd shared in Bren's shed amongst the wood shavings and tools.

But, instead of finding my photo stream or my profile, there was a log-in page asking for my details. Ahhhh that's easy enough, I thought to myself while filling in my user name and email address, I've been logged out, easily fixed. But instead of resuming normal activity, a little square came up advising me that 'Your account has been disabled for violating our terms. Learn how you may be able to restore your account.' Then a blue Learn More box underneath which I clicked on quickly. The next page it took me to asked me all sorts of questions about what sort of account mine was, where I was posting from and my personal details.

I think at this stage I was still thinking that I had been logged out accidentally and that once I'd filled in my details I'd have my account back in no time. Obviously I couldn't have violated any of their terms or conditions so nothing bad could happen, could it?

Initially I was texted a six-number code and asked to use it to verify my account, but I couldn't find anywhere I could enter it.

Then I received an email asking me to confirm that I am the owner of my account by taking a photo of myself holding a hand written sign that includes my full name, user name and a code supplied in the email. The photo had to be well lit, include both my hands holding the sign and my whole face. Unless I fulfilled their requirements they would not be able to help me.

Although by this stage I was starting to realise that my account wasn't just going to reappear, I didn't trust the 'Hi, Thanks for contacting us. Before we can help we need you to...' email either. It felt like some sort of scam.

Maybe I'd been hacked!

I fully remember the first time I ever heard about Instagram. It was 2011 and we were about a week away from heading off on our caravan adventure, having coffee with my sister Emily in Fitzroy. She, who had originally introduced me to the period tracker app that changed my life, showed me through an app that allowed you to put filters and frames on the photos you took on your phone. She said it was possible to then go on and share your edited photos with the world, but she chose not to. Before this we'd played with the Hipstermatic app that made our photos look old school, but Instagram felt a bit more user friendly and natural.

I also remember the first time I shared an Instagram photo for the world to see and I promptly tweeted that I hadn't realised that Instagram was actually a social media, complete with comments and likes and follows.

And there began the slippery slope:Travel around Australia in a vintage caravan, take pictures, geotag the pictures, explain in the caption what we were doing, post, follow friends and family back home as they caught on, look at their pictures, like their pictures. Repeat. And it was simple and a bit messy back then. We used lots of filters, posted everything unselfconsciously and often, popped our photos in frames and liked everything we saw.

When we got home and I wrote a book about our travels I used Instagram to publicise it, I started seeing our farm differently as I posted it in squares and people liked them. And then one day I posted a picture of a cute, yellow vintage caravan I saw and got a notification that it had hit the popular page. I still have no idea how that happened or what it meant, but it sent a truckload of followers my way and that felt good.

In 2014 I got an email telling me that I was one of Instagram's suggested users which again sent 1,000's of new followers my way. But as I clicked on many of their profiles and saw that they were sexy models wanting followers, scary guys posing with weapons or cash, and buy-lots-of-follower accounts, I started blocking them and feeling icky about my life being so public and accessible.

On July 6th 2015, Instagram published a short story about us on their blog called 'Growing food with love and integrity'. That felt very exciting and brought with it a lot of interest from all over the world, including a follow and a post from Jamie Oliver!! (I still get a kick when he likes my photos and watches my stories.)

Instagram sent me Christmas presents for a few years in a row and last September we attended a party they threw with a table laden with food that looked like a garden, boxes of fancy doughnuts, stickers, badges, speeches and a photo booth.

Basically, apart from a couple of spikes, my Instagram life has been pretty low key and full to the brim with photos of farming, knitting, mothering, travelling and other family adventures, sometimes slightly filtered, often rambly-captioned, occasionally hash-tagged, mostly taken on my phone, never sponsored, never stolen, and never sexy.

And although over the years I have questioned the algorithms, the designerness, the use of proper cameras, the fact that people have several accounts, the dodgy ways people go about accumulating followers, and the fact that it feels much less friendly and much more businessy than it used to, I feel like I have stuck to what works for me and been true to that.

Which brings us back to last Saturday and all the awful thoughts that were starting to run through my mind. Had my account been hacked? Had someone reported me? Would I ever get it back? Could someone else use my profile? Did I have all the photos saved? How would I let people know? How would I ever find some of the profiles again? Was this the end of @foxslane?

Eventually Bren came in, I filled him in and he started googling. There were stories about some celebrities being hacked but nothing yet about the little people.

I posted to twitter, I took the photo with the information Instagram had asked for and sent it to them, I posted on Facebook and then I waited.

I felt like I'd been punched in the guts but I didn't cry or make a fuss. In fact I think I was quite calm. When the girls came in and we told them they weren't all that empathetic which annoyed me, considering how hysterical they have been known to be when they close all the tabs on their computers by accident or think they might have deleted an essay. But they eventually came around.

Later that Saturday afternoon reports started dribbling in that other people had lost their accounts too, including this blog post, and that this was quite a wide spread thing. Somehow, once I was aware that it wasn't only me, I felt more secure in my faith that order would eventually be restored and that I'd get my account back in due course. It might have been naive faith but it helped me move on and enjoy the rest of the weekend in any case. Including a switched off, unphotographed fathers' day which I can't help but think might have been farmer Bren's best present of all.

On the three days that I was locked out I noticed that I posted to and read Twitter for the first time in years, I posted thoughts, videos and photos to Facebook that weren't related to my blog and I enjoyed the interaction, I left my phone in the charger for long stretches of time, I checked every few hours to see if my account was back, I worried about how I would ever contact some of the people I chat to in instagram daily but have no other way of finding, when people wrote to tell me they missed my feed, checked to see if it was back, or had written to Instagram about me it meant the world to me. People wrote me the kindest messages. I was in the dark but I didn't feel like I had been forgotten.

I seriously wanted to be the type of person who didn't care so much about being locked out of an app. My life is dirt under my finger nails, knitting cabled beanies, cooking food my kids won't eat and cutting myself a crooked fringe, I live in the real world. But I did care. I do care.

I thought a lot about how much power we give over to our personal lives in social media. How we can spend years building up these beautiful profiles and relationships only to have them deleted with no warning or reason. How much care we put into our photos and responses only to have the apps dictate algorithms that feel random and sometimes cruel. And how much I take for granted that what is there will always be there.

More than once over those three days I wanted to refer to a photo to remind me of the date or of how something looked, only to remember that I couldn't access the information. I have the photos saved in my library, but I need to find a way to back up the captions and comments and to be able to contact some people who I feel like I know so much about but don't even know how to contact in real life.

On Saturday Miss Jazzy informed me that she was upset that I'd had my account disabled because it meant she'd lost a follower!!

On Sunday I posted to Facebook -

things i didn't get 2 post on instagram this weekend - sock knitting, wooden bowl carving, bundt cake baking, daffodil picking, organic farming - pretty controversial, no wonder instagram blocked me

On Monday I heard that people were slowly getting their accounts back and so I had confidence that it was only a matter of time until I had mine. On Monday it also snowed which was a bit mean considering I couldn't post videos and photos of the beauty. And seriously, if it snows and you don't post it on social media - did it even snow?

And then on Tuesday morning it was there! Everything exactly as I'd left it. Phew.

I had an email from Instagram informing me that it was back and 'we apologise for any inconvenience caused' but no reason for the inconvenience.

And aside from lots of lovely comments on my photos, that's about it. I'm happy to be back but I'm slightly more wary too.

So there you have it. That's my locked out of Insta story. If you're reading this because it's happened to you and you've found me through googling it, I hope it brings you some comfort - you are not alone.

So how about you?
Are you a social media addict?
Do you feel like you control your social media or does it control you?
Have you had a scary app moment?
Is all your online stuff backed up?
Do you ever wonder about all that data out there and what happens if it all disappears?

Have fun out there!

Love Kate

xx