#TechBytes: How to make your Instagram private, dodge creepy stalkers
With over a billion active users, Instagram dominates as one of the most popular (and controversy-free) products from Facebook. The service offers a platform to share photos, videos, and ephemeral stories, but the worrying part is, it can also be a hotbed for stalking, allowing unknown individuals to creep up on your life - without consent. Here's how you can avoid that.
Stalkers can learn a lot about you from Instagram
If Netflix original YOU is any lesson, an unprotected Instagram account can reveal a lot about you and your personal life. Specifically, an unknown individual can easily use the service to search your profile, go through your photos, videos, and daily stories, and learn things like places you visit most often, people you are close to (friends, family, relationships), and even where you work.
Not to mention, this increases the risk of harassment
With the information collected from your Instagram (and other) profile, a stalker can not only harass you online but also track you down, follow you in person. This, as we have seen in the past, can lead to major cases of abuse. However, the good news is, Instagram already offers tools to avoid that.
Set your profile to 'private'
The first thing you should do is setting your Instagram account to 'Private'. A private account will make sure no Instagram user is able to see your posts/stories unless you approve their 'follow' request. Additionally, this will also give you the liberty to decide if the person requesting to follow is worthy enough (like someone you already know) to be approved or not.
Steps to make profile private
To make your account private, head over to your Instagram profile, hit the three-dashed icon on the upper-right corner and go into Settings. After that, go to Privacy > Account Privacy and turn the toggle for a private account on.
Remove people from followers list
After making Instagram private, head over to the 'Followers' section on your profile and remove people you think you don't know or are creepy stalkers. Removing these people will make sure they are not able to see any more of your photos, videos, or stories. This will be critical to locking down your profile to only those you want to give access to.
Hide your stories from individual followers
While setting profile private and cleaning follower list is enough to dodge stalkers, there are some additional controls to go more granular, as well. One such option will let you hide your stories from select followers or people you want to keep on your follower list but don't want them to see personal moments of your daily life.
How to hide stories from select individuals
To hide your future Stories, head over to Settings > Privacy > Story > Hide Story From and select the name of the person you want to hide your story from. On the same page, you can also turn the share stories toggle off; the option will keep people from sharing your stories as messages or as their own story.
Finally, block to hide feed posts from specific individuals
Making Instagram private can keep posts hidden but if you want to hide your posts only from a specific individual, and not from the entire Instagram community, then use the 'block' button. The option, accessed from the three-dotted icon of Instagram profiles, will completely cut off the person in question. They will not be able to see your posts, stories, or even your account.
