Why insurance is a must for Instagram creators

Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms for creators, with an estimated one billion monthly active users. Of the 1 billion monthly active accounts on Instagram, roughly 500K users have over 100k followers and are considered full time creators, while 30M have between 50-100K followers and are considered to be monetizing their content as a side hustle. 

Thousands of other business owners use Instagram to build communities and drive sales - yet such a powerful tool has no security guarantee or protection against the disastrous impact of hacking attacks. Which is why we created Notch - the first insurance for content creators.

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The growing threat of Instagram hacks

Research by the Federal Trade Commission found that US consumers lost $770 million in social media scams in 2021, an 18x increase from 2017. Zooming into hacking scams specifically, Eva Velasquez, the President/CEO of the Identity Theft Resource Center, reported seeing an 80% increase in hacked Instagram accounts between October and November of 2021. 

The most common tactic is phishing, in which a hacker impersonates a legitimate account - whether a friend of the creator or the official Instagram account - to steal sensitive information from victims and then hijack their accounts. 

You might be interested in: 6 ways hackers steal Instagram accounts

For example, a hacker tricked Paige Doherty, the owner of a custom teardrop trailer business and Instagram community, by impersonating the official Instagram account and claiming she’d made a copyright infringement on a recent post. 

“I'm a goody two shoes”, Paige tells us, “so naturally I got scared after reading this message and wanted to fix the issue immediately. So I clicked on the link, and the next thing I know I’m locked out of my account and being held ransom."

“I'm a goody two shoes, so naturally I got scared after reading this message and wanted to fix the issue immediately. So I clicked on the link, and the next thing I know I’m locked out of my account and being held ransom."

Occasionally accounts are recovered by Instagram itself, but more often than not the owner is forced to pay the hacker a ransom to get it back. Sometimes, the account is lost forever, and years of work go down the drain - along with a meaningful source of income. 

This doesn’t just affect the superstars of Instagram - even small accounts owned by creators and businesses are targets. Natalie Grunberg-Ferreira, a hair salon owner with a strong community on Instagram, describes the consequences of getting hacked: 

 “Three weeks being locked out of our Instagram took its toll on our salon: clients could no longer get personalized service, we likely lost a lot of business, and we lost all traction for a big giveaway we did. We also lost hundreds of followers. 

Instagram never responded to my requests for support, despite emailing daily. To make matters worse, the story the hacker posted on my account was an investment scam and one of my clients fell prey to it - she lost $2000.” 

Unfortunately, there are countless other stories similar to Natalie’s.

Treating digital assets like physical ones

Despite the total creator economy market size being worth around $104.2 Billion in 2021, it’s taking the world time to treat digital assets as equal to physical ones. However, as creators become even more sophisticated, and the supporting ecosystem fills the vacuums that currently exist, we expect it to become the norm for creators to insure their assets. 

That’s why we created Notch - the first affordable, tailor-made insurance product for creators to insure their accounts against hacks.

How does it work?

1. Creators buy insurance coverage for their account
2. Notch scans the dark web to check if their credentials have been leaked
3. If they get hacked, Notch notifies them immediately and pays a daily sum to cover revenue loss
4. Notch helps to retrieve the account
5. Creator is back in business

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