Is It Possible To Track Someone On Instagram?

Elena_Richards
Sat, 04 Apr 2026 05:25:48 +0000

Short answer: You cannot legally track someone’s private activity or location on Instagram. Instagram does not expose detailed user activity, location, or DM content via any public API or legitimate tool.

What’s possible:

Public activity: You can see publicly shared posts and stories. Notification-based tracking (e.g., when someone posts) is only available via external monitoring services, but these simply check public posts—they cannot see interactions or private info.

Example tools: Visualping, IFTTT (via RSS or email alerts), or browser extensions that track page updates.

Location: Only visible if the user tags their location in a post or story.

Interactions: You cannot see who someone interacts with, likes, or DMs, unless it’s a public comment.

Legal/Ethical boundaries:

It’s illegal and unethical to access private information (including disabling security measures, hacking, or using spyware).

Automated scraping of public data may violate Instagram’s terms of service.

Recommendation: If you need to monitor public activity (for instance, for brand/reputation reasons), stick to page change monitors or Instagram’s own notifications, and never attempt to bypass privacy controls. For anything more, obtain explicit, written consent from the person.