How To See Who Stalks Your Instagram: 4 Ways To Catch Them

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You might have a reasonable suspicion that you have an Instagram stalker, and you probably wonder if the feeling is justified.

Well, in this post, I will help you learn how to see who stalks your Instagram. You will get to know how to identify stalkers and protect yourself against them.

I will go over every method step by step, discuss ways to handle stalkers, and debunk some myths about inefficient methods.

How To See Who Stalks Your Instagram – 4 Best Ways

There are different steps you can take in order to see who’s stalking you on Instagram. These steps will depend on the commitment and vigilance of the Instagram users that are stalking you.

If someone stalks your Instagram account regularly, it will be much easier to catch them.

1. Check Instagram Story Viewers

The first method that you should utilize when trying to discover who is stalking you on Instagram is to check your stories.

You can do this by going to your Instagram profile and clicking on your profile picture once your story is live.

After you have clicked your profile picture, simply swipe up to reveal the list of people who have seen your Instagram stories.

Instagram story viewers

Instagram has not revealed how the listed users are ordered, but there are theories that the ones that are on the top have viewed your story the most.

Anyhow, the more you post and the more you check who is viewing your stories, the more you will be able to spot people who do it frequently.

2. Catching a Suspected Stalker via Instagram Story

If you have a certain person in mind, and you have a strong suspicion that they are stalking you, there is a way to test the suspicion out.

There is an option on Instagram to “Hide story from“, which allows you to hide your stories from anyone you select.

You can make use of this option before publishing stories by going to “Story setting“, and selecting the “Hide story from” option.

hide your story

To catch an Instagram stalker this way, we will hide the story from everyone except that one person.

Since they are the only person who can view the story, the view count on the story will display only their visits.

Instagram stalker

3. Check Instagram Highlights

Instagram highlights

Another thing you can do while investigating if someone is stalking you on Instagram is to check your Instagram highlights. The highlights are essentially stories that remain on your account as long as you want them.

If you have many of them, and someone has viewed them all, it can be a strong hint that they are stalking you.

4. Use third-party apps

There is a whole market of apps claiming they can help you answer questions such as “who viewed my Instagram?” Such apps are never a good idea.

They will usually just use your account to farm and sell your data, and they will not give you more information than you would have gotten from just using Instagram.

4 Ways To Handle Instagram Stalkers

Unless the stalker is harassing you or threatening you, there is not much you can do legalwise. There are, however, many ways you can deal with them on the platform.

1. Block them

The easiest and most efficient way to stop someone from bothering you is to block them straight up. Blocking will fully remove their ability to search your Instagram profile and interact with you on the platform.

Here is how you can block someone on Instagram:

  1. Launch your Instagram app and log in to your Instagram account.
  2. Tap on the bolt icon located in the top corner of your screen.
  3. Find the person you want to block and open a conversation with them.
  4. Tap on their username found at the top of the screen.
  5. Scroll to the bottom of the page and tap block.
  6. Here you will have two block options, one will block this individual account, and the other will block every new account that this user makes.
block Instagram account

Of course, it is fair to assume that a person who spends their time stalking you on Instagram might not be stopped by you blocking them.

They can always make a new account to circumvent your block, however, if that is the case, you can just keep blocking them until they give up.

2. Remove Them From Your Followers List

If you are getting uncomfortable with someone stalking you, you might simply remove them from your followers list. For a lot of people, this will be enough to give them a hint.

Here is how you can do it:

  1. Launch your Instagram app and log in to your Instagram account.
  2. Tap on the profile button at the right bottom of the screen.
remove from followers list

  1. Tap on your followers’ list and find them by scrolling or using the search bar.
  2. Once you found them, simply click the greyed-out “Remove” button next to their name.
remove option

3. Switch to a Private Account

Having a public account leaves you open to the preying eyes of stalkers. When your account is public, everyone can see everything that you publish; this includes both posts and stories.

Most people will just check out your account from time to time and interact with you appropriately, but stalkers might use this to mess with you.

Switching to a private account can bring you some peace of mind. When your account is private, the only people who will be able to see your posts are those you allowed to follow you.

Here is how you can switch to a private account:

  1. Launch your Instagram app and log in to your Instagram account.
  2. Tap on the profile button at the right bottom of the screen.
  3. Tap on the three horizontal lines located in the top right corner.
Instagram account settings

  1. Tap on the settings cog.
  2. Tap “Privacy” to enter Instagram privacy settings.
  3. Under the “Account Privacy” header, toggle the private account setting.
private account

4. Disable Activity Status

Not all stalkers are made the same, and some can even be your friends. They will constantly check whether you are online or not, and they might spam you with messages whenever you appear online.

If you want to prevent being spammed when you appear online, the easiest way to fix this is by disabling your activity status,

When you disable your online status, you will not appear online. Here is how you can do this:

  1. Enter settings, and then Privacy.
  2. Near the bottom of the page, you will see “Activity Status,” tap on it.
  3. Here toggle off “Show Activity Status.”
disable activity status

Conclusion

The nature of the Internet has made it easy for people to get stalked. While most stalking is relatively harmless, it can still be annoying to deal with. Once you are able to discover your stalkers, you can easily use many methods to get rid of them.

The most effective method is blocking the stalkers and setting your account private. This way, you are significantly lowering the chance of them bothering you.

FAQ

Can you tell who stalks your Instagram?

It is very hard to tell if one of your Instagram followers is stalking you, but there are a few things you can do. The longer someone stalks you, the more traces they will leave.

Following Instagram statistics for a while will give you a pretty good idea if they are stalking you or not.

What does it mean when a person is first on your Instagram story?

The most common reason someone is first seeing your story is that it was published while they were browsing other stories.

If someone is checking your stories regularly, it is safe to assume they are interested in you.

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Mell

Mell is one of the Stream Mentor's co-founders and a versatile content writer. She's helping other streamers get their visuals right, set the right panel, use the right lighting, install overlays properly and boost the stream quality to a great extent.

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