We were #hacked and now we are back—and better than ever!

Social media has become the cornerstone of connection to others and to information for many people. Some people and organizations invest a lot of time building their social media “brand” to provide followers with consistency and familiarity as well as to set themselves apart in unique ways from other accounts. It can be quite inconvenient, and perhaps in some cases, devastating, for an organization or person to have their account hacked.

That is exactly what happened to our original Instagram account (@sexlab.ca) in May 2022.

As a sexual health research lab, we use social media to share information related to sexual health, to keep our followers informed about our studies and the results of our studies, and to create social media campaigns (like #PGADFacts) to increase awareness of distressing sexual health conditions. We also love to keep up to date with what other labs, organizations, and people are posting in the area of sexual health!

Our Instagram account was key to these efforts, and it had a large and diverse following with over 5 years of invaluable metrics (e.g., impressions, engagement rate, branded hashtags, etc.).

And then one day, it was gone. Hacked and not able to be accessed. No matter what we tried.

And believe us, we tried. We alerted Instagram that we were hacked and felt full of hope when we were able to submit video selfies as proof that the account was ours.

But our video selfies were rejected, over and over again. Caroline, the owner of the account and the person in charge of the Sexual Health Research Laboratory at Queen’s University, was not able to prove that the account was hers.

So, Sam, a graduate student, who had recently posted a picture of herself on the account, tried.

And failed.

So did Shannon.

#Rejected.

Try as we might, with YouTube tutorials and repeated attempts to alert Instagram, we couldn’t get the account back. We tried going through Facebook, and we desperately messaged text boxes that showed up in the “Having trouble with your account?” section (“Was this information helpful? Please leave a comment!”). No luck. And we never found a person to directly speak with about this issue!

In the meantime, the hacker encouraged our followers to invest in bitcoin via posting stories with ads on our account.

After several weeks of identity verification rejections and frustrations, we decided to use this unfortunate experience as an opportunity. We are now back, better than ever, with our new Instagram account: @qsexlab

On @qsexlab, we will post factual information about sexual health, opportunities to participant in amazing studies, and stories about sexual health topics and lab members involved in sexual health research, among other interesting sexual health-related tidbits. And we could not be more excited to share with all of you!

We cannot thrive without our followers, so please follow us! You will be in for a treat.

In the coming weeks, we will be posting about a plethora of topics that may pique your interest! For example, we’ll be posting a link to an article about the need for genitopelvic pain research in 2SLGBTQ+ individuals (#AGPPStudy), announcements about a course on genitopelvic pain (shoutout to ISSWSH!), results from a study on blue balls/vulva (in collaboration with Science Vs), unique findings from a study on the orgasm gap (again, with Science Vs), calls for research participants who have all types of pelvic pain (#AGPPStudy), and a soon to be launched study on what people find sexy (the “SEXY” study)!

We are back, and better than ever! #lifehack #makinglemonadeoutoflemons

(Oh, and we have secured the S#*! out of our account this time! #nofilter)

Caroline Pukall, Sam Levang, & Shannon Coyle