We know “who has viewed your Instagram” and it’s not who you think

Do you want to know who has viewed your Instagram photos?

There’s something every Instagrammer wants to know: who is looking at my photos?  We live in a show-and-tell world, with I-see-I-do-I-post-mindsets, comments, and “likes”.  No one wants to disappear at fault of a #boring photo.

However, ever since the arrival of Instagram Stories, which does allow you to see who has seen the videos and photos you have shared, the idea is beginning to spread that you can also know who has seen the content you have posted on your wall.

Instagram makes it easy to play pretend, but what happens when someone else pretends to be you?

In theory, social media sites like Facebook make it so that third parties can’t access your “secret information,” but without our knowledge, hackers are taking advantage of us: robbing personal data (even those super-complicated-and-thoroughly-thought-out passwords) and gaining full access to our profiles.

In the hypothetical and remote case of Mark Zuckerberg and the directors of Instagram deciding that you could access this information, it would be the app itself that, in one of its updates, introduced the option so you can know who has seen your photos.

If someone tells you they can do it, they’re not to be trusted.

“Who Viewed ME on Instagram- InstantAgent”

Consider the case of Turker Bayram, a sadly popular yet elusive malware developer who has been able to place his malicious apps  in the top charts on Google Play and the App Store.  Soon after he creates them and uploads them, there are massive numbers of downloads.  By the time someone figures out what’s going on, and after hundreds of thousands (potentially millions) of users are robbed of their personal information, Google and Apple finally delete the apps.  This has happened at least twice.

“Who Cares With Me – InstaDetector”

A few months ago, an independent developer named David Layer-Reiss warned us on his blog about Bayram’s new malicious “software”.  The iOS version was called “Who Cares With Me – InstaDetector”, and in Android, “InstaCare — Who Cares With Me”.  These “apps” discovered by Layer-Reiss have already been eliminated and, in November 2015, both Apple and Google withdrew Bayram’s original platform, InstaAgent.  It is not the first time malware takes over a popular site (i.e. Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook) in order to massively rob user profiles… and it won’t be the last.

These “apps” always return to the top of the charts and sometimes under the umbrella of the same developer.  In the case of “InstaDetector”, the victim innocently enters their credentials, unaware that the confidential data is sent to the attacker’s server.  Instead of discovering “who has been looking at your Instagram?”, the cyber-attacker seamlessly accesses the account as if it were their own and posts spam photos on the owner’s behalf.

Strengthen the security on your devices

From telegrams to Instagrams, the more technically sophisticated we become the more important it is to trust the communication source, or in this case, the “app”.  “InstaDetector” is just one of the many scams designed to take advantage of the enormous interest generated by social networks.  The most worrisome thing about them is their popularity, always massive and immediate, that by the time Google or Apple are involved it’s too late for thousands of users.  Combat these threats by staying alert, ignoring false promises, and installing a tough antivirus on all of your devices.