A hacker who refers to himself as the King is demanding more than $40,000 to return control of a social media account belonging to Al and Jen Ferguson, the founders of Dadsnet. The British couple has shared details of their lives with tens of thousands of followers on Instagram, founding a parenting forum geared towards fathers. Recently, the couple noticed that they were locked out of their successful social media account. The hacker changed the handle of the account and sent a message to Jen via WhatsApp demanding that they pay $40,000 to regain control of the account.
The handle had been changed from @itsTheFergusons to @PharaBenDarWay30K. The family photo that was originally the couple’s profile picture had been swapped to an image of a bloodied face, according to Jen. The hacker had also replaced the bio. Although Jen and Al tried to regain control of the Instagram account, 36 hours after the hacker initially made contact with the couple the account was deleted.
Read More: Cyber-criminal Targets Dadsnet Founders
