How to Protect Your Privacy on Instagram?

Instagram is one of the nicest platforms nowadays as a social media, it gives you one of the finest experiences of sharing photos, blogging, reels and connecting people all over the world; but with that comes privacy and safety risks. With that kind of risk included you need to know how to protect yourself from that as well.

Whenever you agree to the terms and conditions you are allowing data collection for that platform.  Scammers and advertisers can get sensitive information on you which they can use to scam you, manipulate you or blackmail you as well. 

Sensitive data such as life and relationship, religious stands, political stands and belief, check-in locations, previous cities, information on employment, and previous employment, personal identifiers can be used in various ways to harm you.

Hence it is important you control your audience and protect your data from unwanted people.

Here are a few ways you can make your data protected and protect your privacy on Instagram –

Make your Instagram Account Private

These simple steps will help you choose the audience to whom you want to share your photos and videos. This way you can only share or interact with people you care about.

How to Make Instagram Account Private On a PC?

Now, you can make your Instagram account private using your PC. Here’s how you can do it.

Step 1: Go to your Instagram profile.

Step 2: Click on the top.

Step 3: Click on privacy and security.

Step 4: Next to the account privacy click on the check box to a private account.

How to Make Instagram Account Private On a Mobile?

We usually have the Instagram app installed on our phones. So, we can easily make our accounts private using the app itself on our phones. Here are the steps:

Step 1: Go to your Instagram profile.

Step 2: Go to settings on the app.

Step 3: Click on privacy security.

Step 4: Click on account privacy.

Step 5: Turn the private account on.

Should You Allow Third-party Apps to Access Instagram Data?

There are lots of third-party apps that will promise you to provide certain types of data like who visits your profile frequently or who does not follow you back etc. So you need to be more careful as these apps can steal your data and also your login details to hack your account or to sell your personal data. So make sure you only grant access to apps that are truly needed to use Instagram.

In case you have already done so and want to revoke then you need to use the web interface, as you won’t be able to do it via the mobile app.

In order to do that you need to log in to Instagram via browser, click on the ‘person icon’, click on the gear icon then ‘authorized apps’ and you will see the list. Then click on ‘revoke access’.

Select carefully what you are sharing on social media:

The photos and videos you share on social media can reveal your personal information such as your house number, your living location, name etc. Be cautious before you tag people in photos and videos. You can try to avoid writing the full name of a person or location or any identifying information.

Two-factor Authentication

Two-factor authentication will send you a text whenever your account is getting logged in to any other device. That will secure your account even if you have mistakenly shared a password with anyone.

In order to do so you need to follow the below steps –

1. Go to Settings
2. Go to privacy and security 
3. Click on Two-factor authentication 
4. Select a text message.

Try to review your account activity from time to time.

By reviewing your account activity from time to time you can track your account records like login logout, password change and more.

To do that follow the below steps –

1. Go to settings 
2. Go to Privacy and security 
3. Go to “access data’
4. Select the ‘Close Friends’ list.

How to Add Close Friends?

You can select your close friend list to share stories only with selected people who you want to show updates on daily life. 

1. Open instagram
2. Click on your profile icon on the top right
3. Click on close friends
4. Click on Get Started 
5. Select the people from the list
6. When you have chosen your preferred people of yours then click on Create List.

When you click close friend again you will see the people you have selected and will get the option to remove anyone if you need to.

How to Hide Stories from Unwanted People?

Instagram has a feature where you can block people from seeing your stories and prevent others from sharing them too.

To do that follow the below steps- 

Step 1: Go to ‘Settings’

Step 2: Go to ‘Privacy’

Step 3: Go to ‘Story’

 Step 4: Select ‘Hide story from’

You shall see the list of people following you and also a search bar on it so you can search for the person and click the circle beside the name that will cut off their access to see your story.

Restrict People from Sharing Your Story

You can restrict people from sharing your story to other people. 

This is how you can do it – 

1. Go to settings.
2. Click on ‘Privacy’.
3. Click on ‘Story’.
4. If you scroll down you will see a label ‘Sharing’.
5. You will see an option called ‘Allow Sharing’.
6. If you turn that off people won’t be able to share your story to others.
7. You can prevent people from resharing your story by turning off ‘Allow resharing stories’.
8. You can stop the stories from being shared to facebook by disabling ‘Share your stories to facebook’.

How to Block People from Your Profile?

If you want to block someone from your instagram account here are the steps you need to follow – 

1. You need to search their profile first and then go to their profile page.
2. You shall see a three dotted menu on the top right corner of the profile.
3. Click on the dotted menu.
4. Select Block. 

How to Turn Off Conatct Sync?

You can make your profile visibility low and make it harder to find for people in your phone contact list via turning off the contact sync.

This shall stop instagram to access your contact data too.

To do so you need to follow the below steps as mentioned – 

1. Go to ‘Settings’ in your profile.
2. Go to ‘Account’
3. Go to ‘Contact Sync’.
4. Disable Contact sync.

How to Turn off Suggesting Your Account to Other People?

When someone follows an account in instagram, instagram provides suggestion to follow some more which the algorithm thinks are similar, one of the suggestions can be your profile too.

To turn this off you need to follow the below steps mentioned – 

1. Sign in the instagram web version.
2. Go to your profile.
3. Click on the ‘Edit Profile’ button.
4. Then you need to uncheck ‘Similar Account Suggestion’.

How to Turn off Active Status?

To prevent people from checking your online status in instagram follow the below steps mentioned – 

1. Go to ‘Settings’
2. Go to ‘Privacy’
3. Go to ‘Activity Status’
4. Disable ‘Show Activity Status’

Wrapping up,

These are some few steps that you can follow to restrict unwanted people’s access to your personal space and information. You can try any of methods mentioned above to protect your account from unwanted attention. Hope it helps you.