In this article:
Identity theft and fraud protection for your finances, personal info, and devices.
What Information Does Instagram Collect?
Instagram can collect the following from registered users:
- Names and passwords of account holders
- Captured content, such as photos and videos
- Data that links users to the photos they took, tagged or liked
- Text message history, address book contacts or other similar personal information
- Metadata on how people use the Instagram mobile app
- Transactional data from Facebook products and services
- Facial recognition data
- Data on which devices are linked to which accounts
- Geolocation data
Related: Don't Get Scammed on Facebook Marketplace →
How Does Instagram Use Your Personal Information?
As is the case with many other social networks, Instagram’s main motive for building a cache of your data is to personalize the ads that show up on your feed.
Ad targeting changes are made based on a lot of different data: your personal account info, your usage patterns, your location, and more.
But it’s not just your data that shapes your ad feed: Instagram compiles the same kinds of data from a variety of users and utilizes it to optimize when and where it shows you certain ads.
Instagram also uses facial recognition data to automatically recognize when you appear in photos.
The additional data that Instagram collects helps the company to perform strategic market research, communicate directly with users, and counter suspected misuse.
Related: How To Reduce Your Digital Footprint →
How Does Instagram Protect Your Data?
Since the Instagram platform is based on the idea that users want to publicly share photos, a lot of content is public. Instagram warns users to be careful about what they share and communicate through their personal content.
To further protect users, the company is changing how data generated on their sites and apps are kept and shared.
Instagram has always had account settings that allow you to control who can see and access your profile. But previously, when you employed third-party apps such as a web-based program to view your Instagram feed, you may have unwittingly agreed to make your photo content visible in search engines. Ad data shared with partners has demographic details in it, but it does not have personally identifying details.
But under Instagram’s new policy, app developers won’t be able to use your data unless you’ve used Instagram in the past three months. Furthermore, logins for these allied apps will be required to tell you whether they use advanced personal data.
If you choose to delete your Instagram account, your posts will vanish, but data shared by others isn’t considered part of your account. Instagram will hang on to it.
Visit Instagram’s Help Center to learn more about your account, its privacy controls and Instagram’s privacy policy.
Related: How To Protect Yourself From Scammers on Social Media Sites →
Protect Your Sensitive Data With Identity Guard
While Instagram has made some effort to protect your personal data that's shared on its platform, most of the work is left up to you.
First, you should safeguard your personal information on social media.
Giving away large amounts of potentially identifiable information is a fact of life when using today’s most popular apps.
Identity Guard can help you learn how data is filtered out to the internet and what you can do to help protect your personal information.
Additionally, if you’re a parent concerned about your child facing cyberbullies on Instagram, learn more about the Identity Guard Family plan that includes alerts of potentially cyberbullying on popular social media sites, including Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
