Mayo native's hacked home cooking site back online with 20,000 followers
By Tom Gillespie
A CASTLEBAR graphic designer impacted by the Covid pandemic turned her love of cooking into a huge Instagram success with 10,000 followers.
But Sarah Butler’s home cooking and lifestyle site was hacked and she lost everything - 100 videos and hundreds of pictures.
However, she went online and appealed for help and by Friday last she had clocked up 20,000 followers.
Saran, a native of Moneen, who has been in business for 17 years, said: “I was doing wedding stationery and that just stopped in March last year. I always loved to cook so I started putting up videos and I got a following of 10,000. Then my site was hacked and I lost the page and everything.
“I had just hit 10,000 and I had just posted a picture of me with 10 balloons and I got a message on Instagram from what looked like Instagram to confirm that I was now at 10,000, I was going to get a badge and to confirm my account details.
“It was 100 per cent genuine looking through Instagram and I didn’t thing twice, and I clicked the link and my page was immediately gone. Somebody had taken it and we sourced it back by speaking to people. It was from Russia and they just took it. It was gone. It was devastating to say the least.
“I ultimately gave it to them. They asked for my password. I thought it was Instagram. But there was nothing I could do. It’s gone. They will probably sell it to somebody to fraud other people as a good site with followers.”
Sarah admitted: “There was a lot of panic and tears. It happened at night so there was nothing we could really do. There was nowhere we could try and ring.
“We waited until about three o’clock trying to figure a way to get it back but it was just like hitting a wall. There was no sleep that night. Really and truly, it was devastating.
“I just got up the next morning and said, right, let’s go again, set up a new page with some posts on it and three followers. Basically I had just put a story up explaining what happened. I was very upset and people were just amazing. They just went ‘don’t worry Sarah, we will get you back’.
“Hundreds of messages flooded in. The numbers began to rise. It was just incredible to see the support of people. It just spread like wildfire. It was unbelievable just to think that people are so supportive, people I don’t even know, influencers that I don’t even follow, shouting me out, ‘get this girl up’.”
Sarah continued: “After just two days I had 17,500 followers. It was unbelievable. I was blown away and I can’t thank people enough for going out of their way to help me. It could have been so much worse. It is just lovely to see the support. Only the Irish could do this.
“I haven’t had even a minute to think because I am trying to get all my old content that, thank God, I had backed up. I suppose because of my career as a designer I am careful and back everything up. So luckily I have it all there. So I haven’t thought of anything else but to get those recipes up again.”
Sarah said there is a duel protection on your account that she didn’t know existed and in settings you can have it that if somebody tries to log into your account you receive am email or a text with a code. “My advice is anyone with an account, get it well protected,” she said.
She explains: “Because I had reached 10,000 you have the ability to have a swipe up option that can direct you to a website to buy off anybody. It will direct you directly to the page so the hackers will probably sell that site to somebody who wants to take people’s money out of their credit cards.
“They can go on and they say they have 10,000 followers so it looks legitimate with so many followers. You buy that address, you give your details and they take all your money.”
An elated Sarah concluded: “Now I have a new page. I went on and said I had just lost everything, can you help me. People just went bananas and I am now on 20,000 followers which is just unbelievable.”
Sarah can be contacted on (087) 2978797 or on Instagram at sarah butler@homeofficial.