PETOSKEY, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – For years, Petoskey’s Isabel (Izzy) Lyman used X to give her personal take on things, posting about local politics, state issues, immigration enforcement, and cultural shifts that rarely get attention in Northern Michigan. Then one innocent click turned her four-year digital footprint into a cautionary tale – and X into a black hole of automated replies.
Lyman, a longtime homeschooling advocate, author of The Homeschooling Revolution, former Petoskey City Councilor and Emmet County Commissioner, and contributor to the Border Hawk website, built an audience of roughly 4,800 followers by doing what she describes as “watchdog” work – monitoring government, sharing Michigan videos, fighting what she calls “wokeness” and amplifying voices outside legacy media. That all ended 11 days ago when she received an email notifying her that her account email and name had been changed. The takeover had already happened.
The DM that did it.
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According to Lyman, the hack likely began with a direct message (DM) that appeared to come from a mutual contact, asking her to click a link to vote in an online poll related to podcast promotion. It looked harmless. It wasn’t. After she clicked, control of her account slipped away and it was now pushing crypto – a topic she says she has never promoted. The scam post was pinned, publicly impersonating her views and reputation. “Crypto is probably the last thing I’m conversing on, honestly, let alone mining and crypto, let alone making money off of it,” she told Michigan News Source.
Welcome to automated purgatory.
What followed during all of her efforts wasn’t account recovery – it was an endless automated loop into a black hole. In trying to get back control of her account, Lyman estimates she sent nearly ten detailed emails to X support, including photos and explanations. Every response was automated. None resolved the issue. There was no phone number. No live chat. No human. There isn’t even a press contact for media outlets to ask any questions about anything. Lyman said, “There was nobody to talk to, which I thought was very frustrating.”
Eventually, X suspended Lyman’s account. The only personalized email she has received so far was the suspension notice, warning her not to attempt to create a new account using the same email address. In other words, she was hacked, silenced, and blamed – and then received threats not to try to start over with a new account.
Paying customer, zero service.
Complicating matters further, Lyman said she was a paid blue-check subscriber, meaning her credit card, phone number, and billing information were tied to the compromised account. She can’t even log in to remove her payment information. “I’m going to have to write them a letter,” she said – a sentence that should not exist in a tech company valued in the billions. There is no clear customer service path for users seeking help from the platform, now owned by Elon Musk. There is no visible live support, effective chatbot, or AI-based recovery system to resolve account takeovers. “But what can anybody do?” Lyman asked.
Not just an Izzy problem.
Lyman is the first to admit she’s “a little fish” but says she’s very fond of her followers adding, “I feel like I have a good relationship with communicating with many of them, hearing about them, what they’re doing, learning from them.” Lyman is also realistic about what is happening. She knows she is not alone. Account takeovers, impersonation, and crypto scams are happening more and more – and X’s response model appears to treat their users as disposable.
X has positioned itself as a free-speech town square but when legitimate users are locked out, impersonated, and left with no recourse, speech isn’t just chilled – it’s hijacked. At minimum, other account holders who have had similar issues say that X needs a verifiable human escalation process for hacked accounts – because if proving ownership of your own digital identity is impossible, the platform doesn’t belong to users at all.
Locked out and left hanging.
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For now, Lyman says she isn’t rushing to rebuild on another platform. She’s not an Instagram person, and Facebook was something she used years ago while serving in public office – not where she wants to land now. X, she said, was “the place to be” for real-time information and discussion, which makes losing the account all the more frustrating. Starting over without answers – and without safeguards – raises a bigger question for her: what’s to stop it from happening again?
Will law enforcement get involved?
Lyman is also weighing whether to report the incident to law enforcement, including possibly filing a report at the state or federal level. The takeover is a form of identity theft – someone seized her digital identity and used it for purposes she never authorized.
Coincidentally, this is “Identity Theft Awareness Week” in Michigan. AG Dana Nessel sent out a press release on Monday reissuing her alert on identity theft warning signs and pointing to a 2024 report produced from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that documents having received more than 1.1 million reports of identity theft, including nearly 24,000 reports from Michigan.
Federal data confirms social media account hijacking is widespread.
According to the FTC’s Sentinel Network Data Book 2024, FTC categorizes compromised email and social media accounts under identity theft, recognizing account takeovers as a form of unauthorized access that can lead to impersonation, financial scams, and cascading losses. The FTC’s data shows that social media platforms are a common avenue for fraud, both as a point of entry and as a tool scammers use after gaining control of an account. Once access is lost, victims frequently report being locked out entirely, unable to reach a human representative, and watching as their own accounts are used to promote cryptocurrency schemes, fake investments, or financial scams.
A digital crime with no customer service desk.
When asked if she thinks that X has an obligation to help victims of account takeovers, Lyman said, “Oh, yes, absolutely. I mean, on some level, it feels like a bit of a cyber crime, like somebody went in there, took my intellectual property, if you will, and used it for nefarious purposes, which I don’t support.”
In the end, Lyman’s story isn’t just about a hacked account or a crypto scam gone sideways – it’s about what happens when a very popular modern public square has no front desk, no accountability, and no way to reclaim your own identity once it’s taken. Lyman followed every rule, provided proof, and did everything right – and still vanished into silence. Until X builds a real, human path back for legitimate users, the message is clear: your digital voice can disappear overnight, and the platform won’t even acknowledge you exist or let you prove who you are.
