Instagram Woes: the starting saga

When I decided on a brand name, I did a few things wrong. I didn’t check for trademarking availability — that’s a LONG STORY, but no one can trademark it — and I didn’t check to see if the instagram handle was available. Guess which one has been more of a headache?? Instagram. Well, the trademark ordeal was scarier but it was over quick. Instagram is ongoing. 

This brand is called Drip Jewelry.  I paid for the rights to dripjewelry.com and emails associated with dripjewelry.  But, a lot of people are confused and it is because of my current instagram user names. So here is the back story:

The username is taken. Weirdly, it has my website listed and my email as the contact. The bio says “coming soon”.  Well, yes. It came. But not from this original guy who wanted to start Drip Jewelry.  There is only 1 person associated with the account and it’s safe to assume that he is the owner.  I tried contacting him, but his account has been inactive for many years and … he might’ve died?? I   I‘ve done a deep dive, multiple times over the past few years. RIP.  So, I report the account to meta/ facebook / instagram over and over and over and over.  I own the rights to the domain, it’s clearly my brand, so you’d think instagram would want help me out. I report the account because there’s noooo other way to contact meta! You can’t just email them or call them. There’s no customer service, even for businesses. — A few weeks ago they rolled out a paid-for-customer-service associated with the verification but it’s new and idk yet — myself.  After many attempts, I figured out what email it was using. Now, I am pretty smart but I know my limitations. I’m not gonna guess a password. I’m also not a hacker and I don’t love illegal activity but it was for the good of the cause. Idk if its even illegal if I try to get into an account that I am trying to own? Not sure? But, I bet a good lawyer would agree.  

Since I know the email address, I go there. Maybe I can contact GOOGLE and they’ll help me. Love u google. I’m thinking “this is just genius and I’ll be able to send the instagram password reset to the email address. And I just need to figure out how to send the email address password reset to another email address.”  Remember when I said my email was the “contact” on the account?  I was reallllyyyy hoping they listed that as their recovery account. Well, I didn’t even get that far. The email address is inactive. Apparently, sometimes google will de-activate inactive email accounts and they just poof.  Long Story as Short as I can: the inactive account still exists, but in a weird limbo. I couldn’t re-create the email, because it exists. I couldn’t log into the email, because it doesn’t exist. Trippy. This took a long time to figure out and I went in weird loops around whole whole google/instagram/email/mad genius situation for weeks.

If you know any local hackers, I would still love the drip jewelry instagram account. But for now, here are my two (one just got disabled because of something I apparently did wrong and idk if it’s coming back yet but thats why I’m ranting about meta and why I have 2 accounts):

@dripjewelrybyak @itsdripjewelry

I love you google. Maybe you can help me.