How to Know who Views your Instagram

How to Know who Views your Instagram

Instagram is a social media platform which allows you to share pictures and videos with other users. It's popularity means explaining this almost as pointless as explaining ‘what is a bus’. But with all of this popularity and the steadily increasing userbase on Instagram, what you may not know is how secure is it. Although Facebook has had recent problems with misuse of data[1], Instagram seems to have come away unscathed (despite being owned by the same company). This doesn't mean people aren't still concerned about their privacy and security on Instagram. More than ever people want to know how to know who views your Instagram so they can see what sort of people they attract. oneHOWTO answers the question by showing you not only how to know your viewers, but also how to do it safely.

Why do you want to know who views your Instagram?

The reasons as to why you want to know who views your Instagram largely depends on why you use the platform in the first place. If you are simply using it to share with friends, then maybe you are just curious about what people you know are interested in what you are doing. Maybe you want to meet new people and want to know what king of new contacts you could make. For those who use Instagram in their business dealings, then who is visiting your profile can provide useful analytics for customer demographics.

Security and privacy information may be important to you. Perhaps you have had a relationship gone sour, deleted your original profile and created a new one, you may be worried you still have an online stalker. You may also want to know if you are attracting too many bots or if there is something you would like to change in terms on content. Further still, many people have discussed the gamification element of using social media. This is, in short, treating using these online platforms like a game, collecting followers like Sonic collects rings and boosting your profile to become an ‘influencer’. Seeing who looks at your profile is almost like a cheat code to help you get to the next level.

Whatever your reason for wanting to see who views your profile on Instagram, it is important to determine what is feasible and what isn't.

How to see who views your Instagram profile

The reason why we need to separate fact from fiction is that there is a lot of misinformation out there. Until recently, there was no surefire way to tell who was looking at your Instagram profile. There were bold claims made, but little evidence to support it. With a recent update, this has changed although there are still limitations.

This update was the addition of Snapchat rip-off feature ‘Instagram Stories’. Stories works almost exactly as Snapchat works by letting you post videos to the platform which are up to a minute long and will only last for 24 hours. While you cannot see who is viewing permanent posts or your profile in general, you are given the ability to see who is looking at your Instagram Stories. To do this you need to be using the app on a smartphone or tablet device and then:

  • Post a story on Instagram Stories.
  • Once the story is posted, tap on the icon on the top left of your profile. This is your profile picture and it is the same thing you tap on when you want to look at other people's stories.
  • Once there, swipe up.
  • See the list of who has viewed your story.

This feature allows you to see who viewed your story and in what order they viewed it. More than that, it also gives you the option to hide your stories from a specific user. This is helpful because you may be happy for them to see your normal posts, but you don't want them looking at your stories (for whatever personal or professional reason). This is maybe appealing because of how people use the stories feature. They know it is going to delete itself soon, so they aren't as considerate when they post. For this reason, people you want to block from Instagram stories might include your boss or your parents.

As we said, unfortunately this feature doesn't work for other posts and it won't be helpful to those who don't use the stories feature. In general, it can give you an idea of the kind of people who are looking at your stories, whether they follow you or not.

About Instagram malware third party apps

The other way people have claimed you can see who has looked at your Instagram profile is through third party apps. These are applications which say they can track who visits your profile and allows you to managed this data. It is usually as part of an application which claims to help you with your own social media analytics. Unfortunately, a lot of these apps are not what they claim to be.

There are some third party apps for Instagram which do seem to be legitimate, but which are still maybe not worth it. These include Blockers Spy which is a good way to see who is blocking you on Instagram and otherwise helps you organize your data. This data, however, is something you can get on Instagram already if you know how to do it. It also charges you $20 per month after a short free trial.

We recommend you to be wary of all the pages and applications that promise to tell you who views your Instagram account, it is false and it will most likely it be malware prepared to infect your devices and expand among your contacts. So if you can't stand the curiosity of knowing who sees your Instagram profile, you will have to be strong and resist the temptation. The only way to tell who is visiting your page is through Instagram Stories or if you happen to have access to Facebook's data, which even governments don't find easy to do.

We want to repeat that none of the applications, pages and programs that claim to do so can do. That Before we start explaining who visits your Instagram, we'd like to highlight that none of the apps, pages or programs that promise to do so actually work. This information is owned by Facebook and, unless the company wants, you will not be able to know who visits your profile and who does not. Moreover, it seems like this policy is not going to be changed. "Instadetector", "Profileview.net" "Who cares with me" or "InstaAgent" are some of the apps that have come out in recent years and that, within a few hours, are among the most downloaded on App Store and Google Play due to the idleness of thousands of users who install them thinking that they reveal all the secrets they want to know.

Not only do these apps never provide the information they claim to be able to deliver, but once they install the program, malware enters the smartphone or PC. This puts into jeopardy all of the user's personal information and will also publish spam in their name. Although sooner or later these applications are removed from Google and Apple stores, there are already thousands of affected users. After a while, another app under another name appears and manages to cheat other unsuspecting users. So, oneHOWTO considers it our duty to warn you, you have to be aware that any application claiming to let you know who sees your Instagram profile is a scam. Don't look for them and don't download them.

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References

1 https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analytica-facebook-influence-us-election