Thousands of Instagram users got an unwelcome Halloween scare as their accounts were blocked or suspended.

Instagram said Monday it had fixed a software bug that prevented users from accessing the photo-sharing platform for about eight hours and led to complaints of accounts being suspended.

“We’ve resolved this bug now – it was causing people in different parts of the world to have issues accessing their accounts and caused a temporary change for some in number of followers,” Meta Platforms-owned Instagram said in a tweet on Monday.

A spokesperson for Instagram did not comment on suspension of accounts. Several Instagram users had tweeted that they were asked for email IDs and phone numbers to access their suspended account.

Nearly 7,000 users of Instagram were impacted, according to outage-tracking website Downdetector, which collates status reports from a number of sources including user-submitted errors on its platform.

Several Instagram users posted screenshots on their Twitter accounts showing that they were logged out of their accounts without explanation — even after appealing their suspension.

One Instagram user tweeted: “Some of us had to put in our email and phone number to verify the account. Now the password has been changed and we can’t get back in because our password has been changed.”

Another frustrated Instagram user wrote on Twitter: “It’s not just down — you’re suspending accounts and threatening deletion!!”

The glitch appeared to be affected high-profile Instagram account holders such as soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo.

Ronaldo, who had 493 million Instagram followers just a day ago, appeared to have lost 3 million followers, according to The Verge.

With Post wires