Instagram gives user's account to namesake footballer Iniesta

Spaniard Andrés Iniesta was caught off guard when Instagram decided to close his account without previous notice. The reason he was given was that he had “infringed the Terms of Use”.

Spanish footballer Andres Iniesta. (AFP File Photo)

Spaniard Andrés Iniesta was caught off guard when Instagram decided to close his account without previous notice. The reason he was given was that he had "infringed the Terms of Use".

The real reason, he suspected, was that he shares his first and last name with famous Spanish football player Andrés Iniesta, the World Cup winner and Barcelona captain.

Iniesta claimed Instagram closed his account - @ainiesta - and gave it to the star footballer.

According to a post written on Medium by Iniesta, the regular guy, his Instagram account was spontaneously frozen on Thursday. But the handle was then quickly re-populated as the account of the famous Barca star.

I just published "How Instagram closed my account and gave it to a football celebrity." https://t.co/6V5107mAnU Please Share

— Andrés Iniesta (@ainiesta) July 19, 2015

Following the post on Medium, it seems Instagram restored the account to its rightful owner, and the soccer player is now using @andresiniesta8 (and has racked up 5.4 million followers).

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Brands taking over accounts being squatted on has been commonplace for a while, but a unilateral takeover of a completely legitimate account seems like an overreach by the Facebook-owned company.

Instagram issued the following statement to tech blog Gizmodo: 'We made a mistake here and restored the account as soon as we learned about it. Our apologies go out to Mr Iniesta for the trouble we caused him.