DUO Mobile: Third Party Account (Instagram) unable to restore or reconnect

[dda6e09]

Hey everyone, big thank you to anyone who reads this and can provide me with any direction. I’m currently trying to help my wife log back into her Instagram account.

BACKSTORY/EXTRA INFO
The other day, she was logged out of Instagram randomly and when she tried to log back in, she was prompted to enter her DUO 2fa code as usual. Unfortunately when she opened the DUO Mobile app, she found her Instagram account is “disabled”. In order to reconnect, she of course needs to log into Instagram… but she can’t do that without the 2fa code. Quite the frustrating conundrum we’ve found ourselves in!

Things I’ve tried already:

• I’ve already, twice, attempted to restore her phone to an iCloud backup of the day before she was logged out of Instagram, with no success. As mentioned here: https://guide.duo.com/duo-restore

• We’ve submitted several requests for video ID verification to Instagram, each has been denied for some reason. This is the only way that I’ve found, so far, to get any sort of help from Instagram’s end.

• We do not have any of the OG “permanent” codes.

THE QUESTION: Is there hope if I were to restore her iPhone to and OLDER backup, or even finding one of her old iPhones and booting that up to see if the account is still connected there…? OR is there something wrong on Instagram’s end? Or perhaps something else? I guess I just don’t understand what on earth happened to disconnect the account. Any help or direction would be much appreciated!

[DuoKristina]

Hi @dda6e09 ,

I’m sorry to hear your wife is having issues accessing Instagram with 2FA.

Regarding your question about whether an older iCloud backup might restore the account in Duo Mobile, I respond with another question: Does she recall enabling third-party account backup in Duo Mobile as described here? It would have prompted her to create a password for recovering those accounts.

If she did not enable Duo Mobile third-party backup on that phone, then no iCloud backup of that phone would be able to restore the third-party accounts.

To your other idea about booting up an older phone: yes, if she still has the phone she used when setting up Instagram 2FA with Duo Mobile then you should be able to use it to generate a passcode to use to log into Instagram and could then access the Instagram security settings to update the 2FA authenticator app registration to the new phone - this time saving the recovery codes - or turn off 2FA altogether.

Unfortunately, it’s hard to tell why the account might have become disconnected in the first place.

Good luck!