Facebook-owned photo-sharing application. Instagram is not limited to being a social media platform only, but it also is a major platform for the promotion of your business and creates scopes of actual earning. Thousands of users all over the world use it for personal and professional needs every day.
Naturally, a security restriction over user accounts is an important issue. Many individuals and organizations strive to establish brand image by buying Instagram likes and giving considerable effort and money in promotion. The privacy of each account is, therefore, of utmost importance for many users.
The Actual Scenario Regarding Privacy
The basic promise of privacy that Instagram has to offer is found to be full of flaws. Photos, videos and even stories that you share on the platform privately among your followers are not completely inaccessible. Contents that you shared can be accessed, downloaded and shared publicly by your followers.
All that one needs to do such thing are an updated web browser and basic knowledge of HTML. Once a user loads up the targeted contents such as images or videos on the web page and extracts out the source URL. If the URL is extracted, it can be used to share the contents for everyone to see, even by those who are not your followers on Instagram and even to those who are not on Instagram at all!
A Tech team of BuzzFeed made an experimental attempt for the same for JPEGs and MP4s from private feeds. They were very much successful in viewing, downloading and sharing those contents and Instagram stories as well. Though the stories remain visible for only 24 hours, the URLs linking the contents remain valid for about a couple of days. The photos of the feed stay accessible for an even longer duration.
More about the Privacy
Instagram is owned by Facebook, and thus, its data is also controlled by CDN or Content Delivery Network of Facebook. Instagram keeps an eye on who see the contents of your account on the application from time to time, but they still do not offer to track in case the data is being accessed through public URLs. Thus, if your friends or followers share your private contents without your consent using URLs, you may never find that out or keep a tab on how many people have gone across the posts.
The process is different from taking mere screenshots because of these public URLs that also provide information on the contents such as the process of uploading the photo or video, its authenticity and even dimensions.
Even if you have removed the photos or videos, one can still access them through Facebook's CDN.
Company's Response to the Issue
Instagram is dotted with aspiring entrepreneurs and business organizations who continuously work on the platform. Many influencers and brands are buying Instagram followers, spending assets on Instagram-marketing, yet the platform has many loopholes. The latest privacy threat is very much alarming.
One of the company's spokesperson responded that the issue at hand is similar to taking a screenshot and posting it without the owner's consent, but the account itself is not accessible. However, this statement stands in contrast to Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO's privacy pledge. He promised to take the entire responsibility to protect user data in every possible way, once and for all.
Zuckerberg also stated that Facebook is not fit for serving you if it fails to protect your data. This is a pretty grave commitment, and all you can do now is to wait and watch the response of Instagram to this persisting problem.
