Although Instagram provides the most smooth and seamless experience to communicate with your friends or followers. But like daily life, there are people on social media and all over the internet who have bad intentions. And they are in urge to do something bad to others, either to harm them financially or mentally.
Online harassers can make your life worse if you get scared by them easily or if you give them ways to easily hack your profile. Also, the recovery process for hacked accounts is frustrating and time-consuming.
Why Protect Your Instagram Account?
If you are running a business or you are an influencer on Instagram, you can assume how badly it can affect you. All your followers’ lists will be gone forever which means losing your potential customers and their trust. Then you’ll have to buy Instagram followers UK to grow your account.
So it’s better to protect your account in advance and you should know what tactics you need to apply. You can do so easily by applying some settings to secure your account and keep your online presence trustworthy. Below are some settings and features through which you can protect your account and make it safer.
1. Set a Strong Password
The password that can be memorized easily can be probably easy to get hacked. If it feels difficult for you to create a complex password and then memorize it. Use password manager tools to create passwords and then store them in a vault or any safe place.
This will make your worries go away because you don’t even have to memorize the password and it wouldn’t be easy for hackers to find it. As your password is hidden behind several virtual doors that need authentications to open.
2. Must Use Two Factor Authentication
If you are worried that someone might hack your password or they can enter your account without letting you know. You can set up two-factor authentication to secure your account from being hacked. With two-factor authentication, hackers cannot access your account in any case, even if they have your password.
Without physical access, he cannot get access to your account. You can easily set these security settings, simply go to your Instagram profile then click on their horizontal lines, and from there choose settings. Then click on security and from there tap on two-factor authentication and then simply Get Started.
You can choose your choice of two-factor authentication either through text message or any other independent authentication app. If you are facing the issue of internet connectivity and you are unable to receive messages. Simply go to Settings and then tap on Two-Factor Authentication, from there click on Recovery Codes. You can use that displayed code to sign in.
3. Keep an Eye on Third-Party Apps
Although third-party apps having access to your account isn’t scary or bad for your account. But it’s necessary to keep an eye on the list of apps that are associated with your account. You can easily check that list from the settings of your phone. Just go to Instagram settings from your profile and then click on Apps and Websites.
If you are an influencer or just a normal user and you schedule your posts with any tool or keep insights into your account through the tool. These tools will also be present in that list, you can decide whether you want to keep them in your list or not. If you are sure that these apps wouldn’t harm you and keep connected with them will be safe.
Then continue using them and if there are any apps that you are not sure of and they don’t need regular access. Because sometimes you associate several apps to get online purchases and then forget to remove them. Regularly check such app lists and don’t forget to remove the ones that are not in use anymore or you have doubts about them.
4. Avoid Phishing Messages
Phishing is online fraud and many people fall into this trick easily and end up giving their personal information. This caused several users to fall into this trick and they got fooled by the tricky ways of phishers. These phishers create messages that look professional from an official source and send them to DMs. These scammers often sound like a support team from Instagram and try to convince you to immediately share your personal information.
You should not respond to such messages and it’s better to ignore them. To give awareness to users, Instagram creators account also shared warning posts on their feeds about such types of DMs. It also helps users distinguish between fake and official emails that are related to Instagram. They have introduced a new feature of the Emails from Instagram tab through which you can check whether you are receiving emails truly from Instagram or not.
You can check these emails from the settings of your Instagram account, simply go to Settings and then Security from there choose Emails from Instagram. There you can find a lot of emails that Instagram sent you in the last 14 days regarding your security or the devices and locations from which you signed in. the second tab of Other will also be there that includes emails sent by Instagram to you in that same period.
5. Have a Look at the Login Activity
Login activity tells you the list of devices from where you signed in last time and on which devices your account is still logged in. You can check from the settings of your account and then go to Login Activity from your desktop. There you’ll find all the locations from where your account is logged in.
You can check this list to verify whether you signed in from those devices and places or not. If yes then continue using it otherwise if anything sounds suspicious and unrecognizable then immediately log out from those devices and don’t forget to change your password right away.
6. Keep the Privacy of Your Account Up to Date
Instagram is a social media platform where you can buy Instagram likes to increase your engagement rate and whatever you post can easily be viewed by others. Anyone can see your pictures and videos this can cause harm to your privacy. If you want to share your information or content with only selected people or the users you want to interact with only. You can do it by changing the settings of your account, if your account is public change it to private from the settings of your account.
But with a private account, you’ll have to approve followers first before they look into your profile content. Only the accounts you approve can look into your feed and they can see which post you liked and can also send you direct messages. With a private account, your photos and videos cannot be indexed by Google on Google images. It’s totally up to you whether you want to increase privacy or reach your account.
7. Switch Off Activity Status
If you don’t want to let others know that you are active at this time or not because you want alone time on the platform. While having online status (a green dot in front of your username in chat) can result in giving answers to your followers. You can keep your status off in your profile so that no one can disturb you and you can continue doing whatever you want to. Simply go to the settings of your account from there choose privacy and then tap on Activity Status and switch it off.
8. Block or Report Accounts
If anyone is harassing you on Instagram or irritating you in several ways, by posting inappropriate content or sending continuous messages that you don’t want to answer. Simply block them from your account so that they can no longer get access to your account. You can also report any suspicious activity or account to Instagram directly. If there is any inappropriate post, simply click on the three dots that are present at the top right side of the Instagram post.
If it’s a story you can find them at the bottom right side. From there choose the report and fill out the whole process by telling the reason for the report. If you want to report any comment that doesn’t seem accurate according to the platform. Long press that comment and then click on the exclamation sign icon at the top right corner.
There is another process that you can follow to report any account, go to Instagram’s website and fill out the form for a report. Instagram will review that account and see if it finds anything suspicious or if videos and images are not according to the terms and conditions of the platform. Instagram will suspend that account.
After you report an account, it’ll automatically get blocked by Instagram. Besides that, you can block any account by yourself by simply clicking on the three-dot menu of your account and then clicking on Block. Instagram takes care of the privacy of its users and it has introduced a new feature Restrict through which you can hide comments of a particular person or more than one.
You can easily restrict them without reporting or unfollowing them. You can easily enable this feature, simply go to Settings of your account from there choose Privacy and then tap on Restricted Accounts. From there you can add accounts manually or simply go that the user’s account whom you want to restrict. Click on the three dots icon present at the top right side of that profile, and from there choose Restrict.
For iOS this process is simple, just swipe left to any comment if you want to restrict it. After restricting comments you’ll be able to see the components of those only who you choose or approve. Also, you’ll receive notifications from the account that you allow and you wouldn’t receive any notifications from the account that you restrict.
9. Mute Instead of Restrict
If you think that restricting someone from your account is rude and you shouldn’t have done this. No worries you can mute any account, in that way you wouldn’t receive any notifications or updates of accounts whom you mute.
Also, the user whom you mute will not get the notification that you muted them. You can easily mute any account by simply tapping on the three dots on any Instagram account in your feed that you want to mute. From there choose mute and it’ll be done. Or simply go to that follower’s profile and tap on three dots from there click on mute.
You can avail of several options whether you want to mute feed posts of that account or just the stories or both of them. If you want to mute a story then simply long press on the story icon of the person you want to mute. From there select Mute and you wouldn’t receive updates on that person’s stories again. In DMs simply click on the information icon and then you can find the option of mute from there.
You can manage mute accounts from your profile by simply going to Settings and then privacy and then tapping on Muted Accounts. There you’ll find the list of muted accounts.
10. Remove Suspected Followers
If you have tried all the methods but the problem still remains there, you can go for the nuclear option. That is removing followers whom you doubt from your account. To do so simply go to your profile, click on followers and then look for the followers whom you want to remove. Most people used this option when they turn their accounts from public to private.
Conclusion
If you are not applying proper security to your account, you’ll probably lose your followers and online presence forever. So it’s better to take steps before facing such a situation, simply apply some privacy settings and make sure to keep your account secure. Don’t share your personal information with anyone and don’t forget to apply the above settings on your account as per you need them.
