Turkish duo snub Instagram’s reward offer after they stumble upon loophole

ISTANBUL

Two Turkish youngsters who accessed the credentials of celebrities who received a blue tick on the social media platform Instagram did not like the award the social media giant offered them in return for their discovery of the loophole.

Hüseyin Çoban, a 20-year-old who lives in Istanbul, applied for an account verification from the settings tab one day to make his account get decorated with a blue tick. However, his application was rejected by Instagram.

Çoban, who wanted to have the blue tick that many celebrities have, asked for help from his 17-year-old friend Arda Kılıç.

Curious about the software, Kılıç later accessed the Turkish identity card numbers of accounts verified with blue ticks as a result of his efforts.

Upon noticing this loophole, the two contacted Instagram and sent an email about the security problem.

Returning to the email, an Instagram team thanked the two young men and rewarded them with $750.

But the boys did not accept this reward, regarding it as “too little.”

Warning against the possibility of a malevolent abuse of this loophole, the duo said that Instagram will fix the problem with the new update.

Repeating that he found the reward too little, Kılıç said that if “malicious people” found this error, they could exploit this.

“They could sell this information. But we did not do such a thing,” Kılıç said with dissapointment.

In 2019, Instagram generated $20 billion in advertising revenue, according to Omnicore, a direct marking agency.

The value of the company was $100 billion by 2018.