THE world's most popular image sharing service has been hit by a bug that caused thousands of users to fear that their accounts were deleted.

Selfie-takers, brands and photographers who share their images on the platform have been shocked to discover that all their pictures are inaccessible.

2 Instagram has millions of users around the world Credit: Instagram

The people who were affected are understood to make up a small percentage of Instagram’s 700-million userbase.

It is thought that the bug not only logged users out of their accounts but hid them from public view, giving the impression that they were banned or deleted.

With no means to contact the company, many affected users felt left out in the cold and took to other social media platforms to express their worry.

Thousands posted their concerns on Reddit, Facebook and Twitter, with people inundating Instagram’s official account with complaints.

Instagram is a powerful platform for brands, business and individuals to build their image and connect with customers.

The Sun spoke to Rhea Boye, an avid Instagram user and Director of Marketing at ChocZero, who alerted us to the problem as it happened.

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Her company’s account appeared to be "deleted".

ChocZero is an independent chocolatier that depends on social media to market its products.

“My boss is overseas in China right now testing a new mixing device we are importing to the States," said Boye.

"This means he's on different hours so he called me to wake me up, panicked that our account was deleted.

“The weirdest part was there was no email, no notification, and absolutely no way to figure out what happened to my account,” she added.

2 Here are some of the angry tweets published by Instagram users

“When I went to login, it simply said the username and email don't belong to an account.

"There's no way to reach out to Instagram to ask what happened, either.

“After a lot of digging, I found a submission form which is used by people when there account has been hacked, which doesn't make sense either.

“When I started looking at subreddits and Instagram's official feed, I saw dozens of people saying their account was nuked without warning.”

Rhea Boye, whose account was reinstated after a day of campaigning on Twitter, told The Sun that the platform is necessary for many brands to grow.

“Instagram is an amazing tool for growing a community,” she said.

“It has a lot of positive energy behind it, people like to cheer each other's weight loss progress on and give each other tips for gym workouts. Losing that would devastate any brand, small or large.”

“Instagram needs to be more candid with their customers, this entire experience was very poorly handled,” she added.

An Instagram spokeswoman said a bug was affecting people's accounts, but did not say how many.

“We’re aware of a bug that is causing some users to be logged out of their accounts,” Instagram said in a statement.

“We’re working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.”