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How To View a Private Instagram Account

How To View a Private Instagram Account
Secure Your Instagram Account from Intruders!

A private Instagram page means those who you accept as your follower can view your content. Many users prefer to keep their content private, which is why they prefer to have their Instagram account private as well. But what if you want to view a private Instagram account? Or do you want to ensure no one can view your private account without your knowledge?

Let’s see how you can make your Instagram profile private and how people can view private accounts.

How to Make Your Instagram Account Private

If you want to keep your Instagram content hidden from prying eyes, you can make it private. This way, your content is only visible to people following you.

  1. Launch the Instagram app and go to your profile.
  2. Tap the three vertical lines (Hamburger menu) in the top-right corner.
     Instagram profile
  3. Select Settings and privacy and tap on Account privacy.
    Instagram Your activity option
  4. Toggle the Private Account switch to the right.
    Instagram private account option

If at any time you want to make your Instagram account public again, follow the steps above and flip the switch for private accounts off. 

You can do this as often as you’d like without any repercussions. But remember that the posts you shared while your Instagram account was private will become public as soon as you flip that switch off.

There’s no way to hide your followers and following list on Instagram, but you can always block people on the platform.

Can You See a Private Instagram Account?

Technically no, but there are multiple ways you can work around this limitation.

  • The Legitimate Way: Asking the person with the private account to accept your friend request.
  • Searching via Username/Real name: This is if you want to know some information about them without asking to have access to their Instagram account.
  • Pretend to be Someone You Aren’t: Read on for advice on this method.

Avoid using third-party apps that claim to show the content of a private Instagram account. None of them seem to work, and they all seem to be associated with money laundering schemes or scams.

How to View a Private Instagram Account

Instagram users want to know that the system won’t sell them out – or at least not sell them out too much. While you can view a Private Instagram account in a few ways, we strongly advise you not to. After all, it’s private for a reason, and you should respect their privacy.

The Legitimate Way

If you wish to view a private Instagram account, the easiest—and most legitimate—way is to request to follow that person. Typically, even a person with a protected profile will approve people they know, so if this is someone you’re acquainted with, you shouldn’t have any problems getting your request approved.

If the other person accepts it, you can see that person’s profile and view any photos they’ve uploaded to Instagram.

Instagram Private Account Request Button

This method is the most straightforward way to access and view a person’s private Instagram account, no matter who they are. Unfortunately, this does depend heavily on you, as an Instagram user, having a pre-existing relationship with the person.

If you’re trying to add someone you don’t know, like a celebrity or a friend of a friend, the easiest way to reach out to them is via Instagram’s direct messaging. Sending the user a direct message, a DM, will inform them about who’s requesting to follow them. 

The best way to do this is to tell the requested user who you are, a bit about yourself, and why you want to follow them on Instagram. Saying as much as “I’m a high school friend of your boyfriend” or “We met at your cousin’s birthday party” can be enough to create a connection between you and your target.

Instagram Send Profile as Message option

Many Instagram users will welcome new friends, especially since they can block or remove you if things get rough. Just remember to keep an eye on what you post and what that person posts.

Try Searching for Their Username and Real Name

This is a quick tip, and ultimately, it might not get you far in your quest to find out some information on your Insta-crush or your old high school friends, but it’s worth a shot regardless.

Log into Instagram and look for the profile you wish to research online. When you locate the account, you’ll be able to see the username of your target. Highlight that name and copy it to your device’s clipboard because we will use it in a moment.

Paste that username into Google or whichever search engine you prefer to use. You can also take a photo that you know is theirs and put it into a reverse image search to see if they have used it on a different, maybe not as protected, social media site.

Google Search By Image option

You can follow a similar strategy using the real names of non-celebrities. All in all, this may not end up gaining you access to a full Instagram account. If you’re looking for some additional photos of a specific person on Instagram, use their login ID to find photos of them posted on other sites. That’s an easy way to bypass Instagram’s own privacy protection—even if it’s only temporary.

Using Instagram Viewer Sites

Searching Google for methods to view private Instagram profiles will bring up endless results of solutions and guides. Still, it will also refer you to several websites with suspicious names that advertise the ability to view private profiles in just a few easy steps.

These sites have names like “WatchInsta,” “Instaspy,” and “Private Instaviewer,” and they all seem to promise the same general idea: use their website to gain access to Instagram accounts marked as private without any extra steps, payments, or requirements.

Some of them even promise complete anonymity or have chatrooms where you can discuss the app with other users.

UI of the Instagram unlock photos software

Unfortunately, after testing a few of the results from the first page or two search results through Google, we do not recommend using these sites. They come from shady backgrounds at best, typically obscuring the company’s name behind the site.

Despite the promise of “free” results, they often ask you to fill out a survey or sweepstakes that requires a credit card or other form of payment to complete.

Some of the sites also seem connected, displaying one name but then showing another site’s name when the survey request loads. We can’t suggest you use any of these sites when their backgrounds are unclear or if they hide their origin on their website. 

We suggest you stay clear of these sites; they’re nothing but trouble for your account and overall internet safety.

If you’ve tried adding the person on Instagram with a friendly message and still can’t gain access to their account, there’s always one option left, though it’s challenging to recommend that to users as well: fake accounts. Let’s take a look.

The Rules

Instagram takes claims of identity theft (using someone else’s real name and impersonating them on the service) as a significant violation and will go after duplicators. We’ll understand why that’s important and how to get around it in a bit.

Instagram Log in page

If you choose to create a secondary Instagram account, here are some ways to get more accepted by a private Instagram account holder.

  • Select a female profile picture for your fake account. This comes across as more friendly and safe. Using a female identity on Instagram makes the account feel less predatory than a male account, though it’s evident that this can create problems on its own.
  • Add real photos to your fake Instagram account. You could also make your phony Instagram ID a private account.
  • If the private Instagram account you want to follow doesn’t approve your request to follow them, send a DM to that person. Explain that you’d like to follow them on Instagram and your reasons. You could theoretically do this in or out of character.

The Less-than-Legitimate Way

There are several different methods of gaining access to a private Instagram profile, using social engineering techniques and deception.

We do not recommend these methods. They are unethical under most circumstances and possibly illegal under others, but it depends more on intent. Some subtleties exist, but if you’re pretending to be someone else online, that is similar to committing fraud. 

The Lazy Way

The laziest method of gaining access to a private profile you cannot see is to create a new Instagram profile with a new e-mail address and a fake name and have that account submit a membership application to a mutually privately held group.

A Person Wearing Scream Mask and Black Dress Shirt While Facing Computer Table during Daytime

Instagram spammers use this technique regularly, churning out the output from realistic name generators for hours and assigning names to everyone in their fictitious empires. Every device (smartphone or tablet) can have up to five separate terminals hooked up to it, so unless you’ve been creating fake accounts already, you have options to add accounts.

Once you have the new account (it will need its own unique e-mail address, but Google Mail makes that trivially easy), just submit a request to the private account you want to follow.

You can send a DM first to break the ice and warn the owner of the private account that a new person is coming in. If they deny access to the account for a trivial reason or specific to you, then the signup should be approved if they don’t suspect that this is a patsy account of yours.

If this method ends up working, make sure to delete your Instagram account once its job is done.

The lazy way is easy. It’s also not going to work very often. It’s probably for a good reason if an account has private registration. What do we do then?

The Trojan Horse

The Trojan Horse takes the same basic idea, but it creates a fake profile that looks “right” to the owner of the private Instagram account we want to follow. For example, say that a popular game streamer had a private Instagram account where she shared only the very elite secrets of a particular game.

If you or I try to gain access to this group with our Instagram account, we likely won’t be successful. Instead, you want to create a fake account that nonetheless looks very real. For our gaming account, we would upload lots of skilled playthrough videos and Instagram posts, bemoaning or praising certain events in the world of game design. And so on.

By investing a bit more time and energy into the fake, creating a line of posts and pictures, complete with a comments section, we give a much stronger impression of being a real person who wasn’t a fraud.

A girl peeking out behind a wall

The Doppelganger

People always unfollow and refollow, and seeing their friend’s account in a follow request is often successful.

An image of hands using and typing on laptop with blank white screen

So how do we manage to get their friend’s account? The answer is that we don’t – but we fake it. There are two big problems with creating a “duplicate” account.

One, it’s one of the big crimes that Instagram actually bestirs itself to do something about. Two, we don’t know who the duplicate accounts are! Private accounts don’t show their followers list when you browse them – so there’s no way to know who follows them. Or is there?

Directly, no. Instagram keeps things too secure for that. But Instagram is not the only place where your private account person has a presence. That Instagram private account almost certainly has a parallel life over on Facebook.

Many people tend to link their Instagram account with a Facebook page. Or it may be on Tik Tok, Pinterest, or Etsy, and the list goes on. Find the social media site with the sloppier security and most online content; almost nobody has perfect security everywhere.

Using other social media sites, find out who they interact with the most on social media. Get the names and usernames of people who are involved in the same groups or interests because those are the people who are also following your interest on Instagram.

Now create a profile or two for these doppelgangers. You won’t be able to use the same username – but you can use one that’s very close. Use accent characters, substituting 0 for O, and so on. You can even borrow some photographs from other social media sites to use as your avatar.

The odds are good that these changes are going to slide by your target. Note that this is a serious rule violation, and you could lose your Instagram account access altogether. One way to prevent that is to exploit a loophole in the Instagram rules.

It is forbidden to copy and impersonate a person’s account – and the only person who can complain about this is the person themselves. To prove they are the original user, they must show a proper state-issued ID.

The key to this is that most people don’t use their full real name, so they can’t prove who they are. Once you’ve been approved for the group, change the username and photos.

The doppelganger, done correctly, is almost certain to get you into the private account you want to access. Use it wisely.

Frequently Asked Questions

There is a lot of information regarding private Instagram accounts. We’ve included a section to answer more of your most frequently asked questions.

Q. Can I view a private Instagram account without their consent?

A. Unfortunately, no. Although some third-party services promise to let you get a sneak peek into someone’s account, these are unreliable. 

The only legitimate way (that won’t get you into any trouble) is to send a follow request to the user in question.

Q. Can I get a Subpoena to see someone’s private Instagram account?

A. This is a question best left to lawyers. But, the company does provide a lot of information on the idea here. Only a court-ordered Subpoena will work in this situation, and it does not serve to give an individual user access to any of the information on an Instagram account.

Q. Can I view a private IG account without following?

A. No. You need to follow that Instagram account to see their posts and stories. 

Q. Can someone see how many times you viewed their Instagram profile?

A. No. Instagram doesn’t reveal if someone visits an Instagram profile or how often they view it. 

Q. How can I see private Instagram stories without them knowing?

A. There isn’t a way to see an Instagram story of a private account without them knowing. The owner of that account will know when you viewed their story. 

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18 thoughts on “How To View a Private Instagram Account”

phoebe says:
very nice application, thanks
suraj says:
I dont think i’ll get permission to View a private Instagram Account..
Asad says:
Nice article but there are some profiles hard to stalk with this
Moaz says:
Moaz
Priya says:
It all about wasting time, I can’t find any proper way to find private profiles.
Shadiac says:
The problem with those scam sites lies within the fact that they all seem to advocate a method which could actually work, although not in the way they’re offering it.
1 – you need an existing username of another user pre-approved (I.e. part of the target’s “Followers” list) and whose account itself is public.
2 – you need a script which would bypass the request procedure by presenting you as a said follower.
3 – this script must function as an event trigger leech, for example it must force the host to like every post so that an event can be created from within their location on the server, which in turn would allow all liked posts to become scripted for download as a packaged archive.
4 – the script would then require to access your device in order to download copies of posts, meaning that you will only obtain pictures, not the whole text, which probably lies on some other end, unless the script forces host user to mass-like every comment as well.
In other words, it’s doable, but won’t most likely remain a) free of charge and b) functional for too long, seeing how privacy breaches are a big issue with Instagram nowadays.
john says:
if you are a parent and worried about your child you have moral grounds for checking up on them, if you own the phone they use then simply install snooping software, which can use key loggers as well as screen recording and send it to your email address, without the user knowing. Be careful with this as if you do not own the phone or are not the parent of a minor, then it is likely you would be making a criminal offence.
Nicole says:
What snooping apps or tool you recommend?
Theresa Barlow says:
So far i know, there’s not a way to view the private instagrams. If you’re a dude, just create a new account, add a bunch of slutty pics from google and you should be added by tomorrow.
Hiruna says:
Ouch ahaha
carkod says:
Will it work with girls?

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Cassandra

Jun 15, 2023

35 Articles Published

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