Locking down your privacy on Instagram can be angstrom simple as setting your profile to “ private. ” But you can get a distribute more farinaceous than that, and there is a roll of other protections you can put in stead. You can keep your account populace but make it a little more protect, or even add stricter protections than simply flipping the private profile switch gives you .
If you actually want to keep your bill safe, here ’ s what you can do .
Set your account to private
Setting your report to private is the simplest thing you can do to lock down your profile. It means that, going forward, no one can see your photos or stories unless you approve them.
once your account is private, new people who visit your profile will only see your name and profile prototype. From there, they can request to follow you, and you have to confirm their request before they can see your photos or stories .
To set your account to secret :
- Go to Instagram’s settings menu. It’s hidden away on your profile page behind the hamburger button in the top-right corner. That will open a side menu with several choices; you can access your settings from the cog that appears at the very bottom.
- From there, go to “Privacy” > “Account Privacy” and activate the “Private Account” setting.
One important caveat : anyone who already follows you at the time you change your report to individual will still be following you. That means if there ’ s anyone you want to deny access to, you have to remove them from your followers list .
To remove person who ’ s following you :
- Go to your profile, and tap on your follower count
- Scroll through your list, and tap the big “Remove” button beside the name of anyone you want to get rid of
Protect your stories
Instagram lets you limit who sees your stories ( the reel of images that disappear after 24 hours ) and stop people from sharing them even further .
To hide your narrative from specific people :
- Go to “Settings” > “Privacy” > “Story”
- Choose “Hide Story From.” It’ll open a list of your followers. Tap the circle beside their name to cut off access.
You can besides prevent people from sharing your floor :
- Go to that same page (“Settings” > “Privacy” > “Story”). Scroll down to the bottom where there’s a section labeled “Sharing.”
- You’ll see an option that says “Allow Sharing.” Turning this off will prevent people from messaging your stories to others.
- You can also turn off “Allow Resharing to Stories” to prevent people from adding your posts to their stories.
- To stop your stories from being shared to Facebook, disable “Share Your Story to Facebook.” This means they’ll only post to Instagram.
last, you can use Instagram ’ s Close Friends sport to limit the pass of your stories to specific people .
- To set who’s in that group of people, go to “Settings” > “Privacy” > “Story”
- Tap under Close Friends and start adding people. People won’t be notified when they’re added (or removed) from this group.
Block people from seeing your feed
When it comes to protecting the photograph and videos posted to your feed, it ’ second much more of an all-or-none scenario than it is with stories .
If you don ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate want to go individual, you can still block individual users :
- To block someone, you first have to go to their account. On their profile page, tap the three-dotted menu in the upper-right corner.
- Click on “Block”
note : you can besides restrict people from this menu. If you restrict them, they can still see your content, but their comments will only appear to you, and they won ’ thymine be able to see when you ’ ra on-line.
Make yourself less visible
There are a few things you can do to make yourself a little bite harder to find ( and give out less information about yourself in the march ) .
first, you can stop sending your contacts to Instagram. You might have given Instagram access to your contacts initially to help find your friends when signing up, but it means that Instagram knows who ’ s in your earphone koran. To turn it off :
- Go to “Settings” > “Account” > “Contacts Syncing”
- Disable “Connect Contacts”
You can besides stop Instagram from suggesting your score to others. This happens when person follows a raw report : Instagram will then display accounts it believes are “ exchangeable, ” which you could be grouped into. You can ’ thyroxine change this using your mobile app. To turn this off :
- Sign into Instagram’s website, and go to your profile
- Select the “Edit Profile” button
- Uncheck the very last option, “Similar Account Suggestions”
ultimately, it ’ s deserving checking to see whether any of your Instagram posts come up in a Google search. By default option, Instagram doesn ’ t permit Google find your photos, but if you ever signed into a third-party vane spectator ( and you might have in the years before Instagram was available on the web ), it ’ s potential that site is scraping your visibility and posting it for all to see .
If one or more of your posts does come up in your search, the first footstep to getting rid of it is to cut off third-party apps ’ access to your Instagram account. You can do that on the mobile app :
- Go to “Settings” > “Security” > “Apps and Websites” > “Active”
- Remove any apps you aren’t using anymore
Protect what people see about you
You can drill down even further in limiting what in your account is visible to early people .
One big thing you can do is turn off your activeness status indeed people can ’ t see when you ’ ra on-line. ( Be aware that, if you disable this, you won ’ t be able to see when early people are on-line either. )
- Go to “Settings” > “Privacy” > “Activity Status”
- Disable “Show Activity Status”
You might besides want to review tag photos before they ’ rhenium posted to your profile. If you have a public account, reviewing every tag can stop spammers from filling up your profile. And if you have a private account, this can stop your friends from sticking an unflattering picture on your profile. To do this :
- Go to “Settings” > “Privacy” > “Tags”
- Enable “Manually Approve Tags”
Stop saving your posts and stories
You may not actually want to save the photos and videos you post to Instagram, particularly your disappearing stories. There are a couple of things you can do to stop that .
To stop your stories from being saved :
- Go to “Settings” > “Privacy” > “Story”
- Turn off two settings. The first is “Save to Camera Roll” (on iOS) or “Save to Gallery” (on Android), which saves your stories to your phone. The second is “Save to Archive,” and turning that off stops Instagram from hanging onto your stories for you to view later after they’ve disappeared.
If you besides want to keep your feed posts inside of Instagram :
- Go to “Settings” > “Account” > “Original Posts”
- Disable all three options (Save Original Posts, Save Posted Photos, and Save Posted Videos)
This will prevent the posts from being stored locally on your call, but it besides means that your only copy will be on Instagram .
Get rid of personalized ads
Instagram ads are based on websites you visit and apps you use. If you want to put a stop to this, it ’ s a little sting catchy. You actually have to hop over to Facebook, which owns Instagram .
To disable ad personalization, you first need to go to Facebook ’ randomness ad settings .
- On mobile, in the Facebook app, tap the hamburger menu in the top right corner, then choose “Settings & Privacy” > “Settings”> “Ad Preferences” > “Ad Settings”
- On the web, just click here to go to the “Your Ad Preferences” page, and then click on “Ad settings” to reveal your options.
- You’ll want to turn off the top two options: “Ads based on data from partners” and “Ads based on your activity on Facebook Company Products that you see elsewhere.” This will stop Facebook from targeting you based on information it obtains outside of Instagram.