Instagram is probably one of the most used apps on modern smartphones, because it combines the potential of a social network with the functionality of an image sharing platform: with Instagram, in fact, we will be able to share all our shots and make them reachable with hashtags, follow famous people or our friends and leave an appreciation or comment under each photo or under each published story. If, however, we wish to have more control over our privacy and prevent the perfect ones from seeing the photos we share or leave comments out of place, in this guide we will show you how to create a private profile on Instagram, so that we can continue to share the photos only with the people we approved on our follower list (friends or relatives), keeping out the snoopers or anyone who disturbs us.
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How to create private profile on Instagram from smartphone
If we use the Instagram app on Android or iOS, we can make our profile private and controlled by opening the app on our phone, possibly logging in with our credentials (we remind you that we can also log in with Facebook account previously configured in the his app) and tapping on the bottom of the Account icon (the last one on the bottom right). Once the account screen is open, press the symbol with the three horizontal lines at the top right, press on the Settings item and finally go to the Privacy -> Privacy path of the account .
By activating the Private Account button, our profile will no longer be publicly accessible and some restrictions will be activated to defend our privacy: the people who intend to follow us will have to send us a request to become a follower (they will therefore not be able to add themselves without permission) and to to be able to see our posts. With the private account, the list of already authorized followers and the list of people we follow will also be hidden.
Unfortunately, people will still be able to send us a photo or video directly even if they don't follow us (using Instagram Direct), not to mention that the followers reached before switching to the private account will already have access to our profile. In both cases we can solve by blocking the profile of the user that we no longer want to follow us or send us direct messages: to do so we go to the profile of the user to be blocked (by tapping on his username or on his cover photo), we press on the button with the three dots at the top right and select the Block item; in the window that appears, press again on Block to make the changes effective. In this way we will be able to block all annoying or annoying users to whom we want to hide our profile or who send direct messages without being our followers.
To further increase the privacy of our Instagram profile, we suggest you make the following changes from the Privacy menu seen previously:
- in the Activity status menu we deactivate the Show activity status item ;
- in the History menu we disable the items Allow the sharing of stories and Allow sharing ;
- in the Tag menu we remove the check mark from the Add automatically item.
In this way no one will know when we are online, the contents shared on our Instagram profile will be protected by re-sharing and can only be viewed by our trusted followers.
Once the private profile is activated, all requests from new followers will be present in the Activities menu (heart-shaped icon), where we can choose whether to add them or not. Remember that private Instagram posts shared on other compatible social networks (Facebook, Twitter) may be visible to the public based on the privacy settings of that social network. For example, if we share a private Instagram post on Twitter, it may be visible to people who see our Twitter posts.
How to create private profile on Instagram from PC
The service is also mainly used by the smartphone, we can create a private profile on Instagram even when we are at the PC, so that we can protect our privacy even when we are at work on the computer or Mac and we cannot act on the phone.To activate the private Instagram profile we open any web browser (like Google Chrome), go to the Instagram page and log in with our Facebook account or with our dedicated account (with username and password). Open the page of the photo social network, we click on the top right on Account (little man symbol), then on the Settings icon
(the gear next to the Edit Profile button).
In the drop-down menu that appears we select the Privacy and security item, so that we can modify the following items:
- in the Privacy section of the account we place a check mark under the Private account item;
- in the Activity status section we remove the check mark under Show activity status ;
- in the Sharing section of the story we remove the check mark from the item Allow sharing ;
- in the Photos section where you are, we put a check mark on the item Add manually .
By applying these changes, our Instagram account will be accessible only to our trusted followers, who will not be able to reshare our posts and automatically tag us on photos.
Conclusions
Even if Instagram was born as a social network in which to share everything and with which to follow the greatest number of people, we can make it a private place and accessible only to trusted people, so as to prevent perfect strangers or unwelcome people from visiting our profile without any type control.Still on the topic of privacy on Instagram, we invite you to read our guide on How to tag on Instagram and check which photos we are in, so as to see which photos we have been tagged in the past.
Obviously the suggestions recommended in this guide will not allow you to have many followers, since our content will not be publicly available. To significantly increase the followers who follow our profile, we advise you to reverse the steps described in this guide and support the tips visible in our guide on How to increase followers subscribed on Instagram .
