Since the recent privacy uproar and GDPR, the European privacy law, Facebook is making sure you can access your data across all its apps. The social network already let you download your data archive, but now, you can also download your data from WhatsApp and Instagram, both of which it owns.
How to request your Instagram data report
As far as I know, this feature is only available on the web for now. It should be available to iOS and Android users soon.
- Login to Instagram
- Go to Settings
- Go to Privacy and Security
- Scroll down to Data Download
- Select Request Download
- Submit your email address
You can also browse the most important data in the browser!
When can you download your Instagram data report?
Within 48 hours of making your request, Instagram will email you a link to a file with your photos, comments, profile information, and more. But like I’ve mentioned before, you can check the basic stuff right from the browser.
How does that affect our community?
- We can now instantly tell whether the account is sold by the original owner, by looking at email history. Just a ticket from last night showed 11 previous inboxes! (Yikes)
- You can verify login locations (this helps in establishing whether it was hacked or not)
- You can download the entire chat history, even deleted messages. Again, this is helpful for determining whether the account was hacked or not.
- You can view all previous phone numbers.
You can basically verify everything. While I don’t think this will be used on daily basis, especially on smaller accounts, larger transactions which we consider high-risk can be now fully checked and verified. So +1 for the European data protection laws!
I am inside the Former email addresses tab, but which one is the original one?
If you see more than one email in the Former email addresses, the email on the very bottom will be the original one (not the top). Just an FYI.