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How to follow a private instagram


How to View a Private Instagram Account in 2022

  • The best way to view a private Instagram account is by requesting to follow it.
  • If you Google search the private Instagram account, you may be able to view associated images. 
  • You can also go through a friend's account if they follow the account you want to view.

Instagram gives us a sneak peek into the lives of other people. But since you can make an account private, you won't always have access to the photos and videos some people post, especially if you don't opt to follow those private accounts. 

Sometimes, this can make sense: You may be wary of following an account without being able to see what they're posting. So it can help to look for examples of their posts to decide if you want to follow an account or not.

Here's what you need to know about seeing a private Instagram's posts:

How to view a private Instagram account

If you want to view a private Instagram account at any time, your best bet is to just follow the account. This requires the user to approve your follow request.

There are some alternative methods you can use to view a private Instagram account without following the account, including using third-party apps that violate Instagram's terms of use — which we don't recommend doing. 

That said, there are other ways you could technically and ethically view a private Instagram account (or posts associated with the account) without following the account directly. 

How to view a private Instagram account without requesting to follow it

If you aren't already following the private account, here are two methods you can try:

Do a Google image search for the account name 

You can copy and paste the private account's Instagram name (you can view the name, post count, and follower and following figures even of a private account) into Google and then do an image search.

You can still see a private account’s name, post count and follower/following figures. Devon Delfino

Chances are that some of their pictures will come up, having been tagged elsewhere on a public Instagram or even Facebook accounts. 

A Google image search can sometimes show select photos from a private Instagram account. Devon Delfino

Quick tip: It may help to add "Instagram" to your search query if you're not seeing anything pop up when searching the handle on Google images.

Go through someone else's account 

If you know someone who follows the private Instagram you want to view, you could always access that account through their account – with your friend or acquaintance's permission, of course. 

If there's a specific Instagram post you want to see, you could also ask them to take a screenshot of the private post and send it to you.

Otherwise, you could request to follow a private Instagram account from another account you've created.

Devon Delfino

Devon Delfino is a Brooklyn-based freelance journalist specializing in personal finance, culture, politics, and identity. Her work has been featured in publications such as The Los Angeles Times, Teen Vogue, Business Insider, and CNBC. Follow her on Twitter at @devondelfino.

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Steven John

Freelance Writer

Steven John is a freelance writer living near New York City by way of 12 years in Los Angeles, four in Boston, and the first 18 near DC. When not writing or spending time with his wife and kids, he can occasionally be found climbing mountains. His writing is spread across the web, and his books can be found at www.stevenjohnbooks.com.

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How to Follow A Private Instagram Account Without Request

Maybe you’re trying to spy on them because you want to find out some information, or maybe you’re just trying to see their pictures, but you know they’re not going to accept you.

Unfortunately, from the get-go, Instagram wanted to give their users an option to make their accounts private because they cared about their user’s privacy. Most social media platforms have options where you can make your account more private than it is such as Facebook and Twitter.

With private Instagram accounts, other users aren’t able to see who follows you, or who you’re following. They also aren’t able to see your posts, and who’s interacted with them. They can only see your profile picture, how many posts, followers, and people you’re following.

How to Follow a Private Account Without Requesting

Table of Contents

Unfortunately, there’s no way to follow someone’s Instagram account without requesting them first. With private accounts, the privacy barrier can only be bypassed when the owner of the account accepts your follow request. For them to accept your follow request to view their account, you first have to follow them to request them. So no, you can follow a private account without requesting.

If you want to look at someone’s private account without requesting, so you can look at their follows, or posts, you need to get a friend to follow the private account so you can see their followers from their phone. If the friend is already following them, you can simply tell them the reason why you want to check the private account and they’ll happily let you view it.

Since you can’t follow someone without requesting, if you want to see someone’s followers on their private Instagram, you have to go through another means of viewing their account without following them from your account. Even if you don’t have an account, you can still see someone’s followers on their private account using various methods.

With these methods, you’ll still be able to follow their private account without requesting from your main account. From here, you’ll be able to check the followers of their private accounts, along with who they follow, their posts, etc.

1. Using Zenomod

There’s a method using Zeno mod that allows you to download isntagram++ then from here, it unlocks profiles for you after you’ve completed a few tasks on the app.

  1. Open Settings.
  2. Turn Off Low Power Mode and Background App Refesh.
  3. Open Safari and go to Zenomod.com.
  4. Search for Instagram and click Install. It’s going to take a while to download.
  5. Open Settings and click Profile Download.
  6. Tap Install in the upper right corner and enter your passcode.
  7. Tap install again and wait for Instagram ++ to install.
  8. Open the app and complete the tasks that it asks you to at the top. Once you’re done, you should be able to view an Instagram profile without requesting.
2. Make Another Instagram Account

The first way you can try and see a private Instagram account’s followers without following the owner is by making another burner account. When you make a burner account, this means that you won’t have to use your real account to follow the private account.

When making the burner account here’s what you need to do:

  • Add up to 5 pictures
  • Gain a few followers
  • Make your account private
  • Make your profile picture attractive

Make sure you use pictures that look genuine. You could take them off someone else’s profile but make sure it looks like someone they would know. Try using a gender opposite to them as they’re more likely to accept.

When you gain followers, make sure that you’re also following a few accounts, so you look like a real account.

Once you’ve followed and have received followers, you’ll need to make your account private and add an attractive profile picture. This is going to increase your odds of being followed by a huge amount because it sparks curiosity. After you’ve done this, you should request to follow them, and chances are that they’re going to accept your request. From here, you can see their followers and you did this without following with your main account.

3. View Their Profile From A Friends Account

Since you don’t want to follow this person to see their follows or they’re not accepting your request, the next thing you could do would be to ask a friend to follow them. If they’re already following this person, this would be even better because they don’t have to go through the process of waiting for them to accept.

You can simply ask that friend to view the person’s account from their account and this shouldn’t be a problem. It’s a much quicker and easier alternative than making a burning account to follow the person.

From here, you can view their account without needing an account yourself to request them. And you can snoop from their follows to get the low down.

4. Send the Person a Private Message

If this person isn’t accepting your follow request, the next best step to take would be to message them privately asking if they could accept your request.

This would be a good step to take if you know that they receive a lot of follow request and they have a relatively popular Instagram account.

For example, if someone requests me, they don’t stay at the top of the list.

They are scattered in the list of requests I have, so I don’t know which one is the most recent. This means that the person you’re trying to follow may have not seen your request yet. Messaging them asking them to accept your request increases your odds by a lot.

This is handy if you don’t mind requesting them, but they’re just not accepting your request. If you don’t want to request them at all, then this isn’t a good way to look at their followers or follow their private account without an account.

5. Wait For Them To Take Their Account Off Private

If you want to view their account without having to send them a follow request, you can just wait till they take their account off private. Most people who put their account on private will take it off private one day so you can check their account regularly and wait till that day comes. If you check their account every few days or every week them this will ensure that you catch their account when it’s off private so they don’t put it back on private again.

6. Check What Their Friends Put On Their Story

If they post a lot on their story and you have their friend on Instagram, if their friend every shares what they put on their story, this will allow you to see a small aspect of their account without having to send a request. When the friend gets tagged in their story, they’re able to post it to their story if they have the setting enabled in settings and this will allow you to see it on their story.

7. Send a Follow Request

Rather than trying to view their account without requesting them, you can just be patient and request them. To get accepted, you’ll need a lot of patience and you’ll need to be able to interact with them so they’re more inclined to actually accept your follow request.

When you send them a follow request, you want to be nice about it and wait till they respond. If you have mutual followers with this person, then it won’t take them much time to respond to it because you guys have something in common. Once they accept your follow request, you’ll be able to see their photos, videos, and followers if you want to.

The trickiest thing to do when you’ve requested someone is to wait for them to accept your request. This takes a lot of patience. For some people, it takes them a while before they accept someone’s request on Instagram. So when you’ve sent the request, then you need to wait just in case they are the type of person that takes a long time to respond.

Some people might not accept requests from people that they don’t know personally. If you think this is the case for this person, then you should send them a direct message to let them know about your interest in them accepting your follow request. If you’ve met them before, just message them talking about the event you were at. If you weren’t then just give them a genuine reason why they should accept your follow request.

If you know this person and you feel like they haven’t seen your follow request by accident, then you can just send them a DM reminding them. You can simply start the message like hey, then remind them of where you say them or met them. In most cases, if they do remember you, then they’ll accept your friend request.

If they respond to you and accept your request eventually, then you should check out their profile and interact with them. Keeping it genuine, you can comment if appropriate, or just like a few pictures. Another great way to be accepted by them is to leave your account open so they can see your pics. This means that if your username isn’t very recognizable but your pictures are, then they’ll accept your request quicker.

How Can Someone Follow Me on Instagram If My Account is Private

Once you make your account private, in order for people to follow you, they’ll need to send you a follow request and this will allow them to see your posts, followers, and following list. You’ll be able to see their request in the following request section – this is where you can see stuff like who’s liked and commented on your post, or who’s followed you. Before they can follow your private account, they’ll have to find it. Because your account is private, it’s less discoverable but this doesn’t mean people can’t find you and request you. They can find you through search, through someone’s following list, suggest, a tag, and if they’ve found you on their contacts list.

Private Instagram Viewer

If you’re desperate to view someone’s account without following them, you might be tempered to use a private Instagram viewer. However, these viewers aren’t exactly how they appear and they’re very misleading.

Don’t Use a ‘Private Instagram Viewer’

There are many tools on the web that ‘allow you to view people’s private Instagram accounts’ but you’d be quite naïve to believe this. All websites that claim to do this can’t do this and they will ask you to fill out some sort of survey before you can see people’s accounts but after doing so, you still can’t view them.

The whole point of private accounts is to make sure that the user has privacy and control over who can see their picture. There’s no way Instagram would give other people the control to be able to view other people’s private accounts and create a tool and publish it on the web for others to use.

How to Follow Someone on Instagram If Their Account is Private

If you want to follow someone on Instagram and their account is private, you need to send them a follow request so that they can accept it and then you’ll be able to see what they post. Following a private account on Instagram is very similar to following a public account, except you’ll need to wait for the private account to accept your follow request unless you’ll be unable to see their account.

To follow someone on Instagram if their account is private:

  1. Open the Instagram app.
  2. Tap on the search tab (magnifying glass).
  3. Type the name or username of the person you want to follow.
  4. Tap the result that matches who you’re looking for.
  5. Press the “Follow” button.
  6. Wait for them to accept your request. Once you’ve been accepted, you can now view their posts, their following and followers list, as well as message them.

When you send them a follow request, you want to be nice about it and wait till they respond. If you have mutual followers with this person, then it won’t take them much time to respond to it because you guys have something in common. Once they accept your follow request, you’ll be able to see their photos, videos, and followers if you want to.

The trickiest thing to do when you’ve requested someone is to wait for them to accept your request. This takes a lot of patience. For some people, it takes them a while before they accept someone’s request on Instagram. So when you’ve sent the request, then you need to wait just in case they are the type of person that takes a long time to respond.

What Happens When You Request to Follow a Private Account on Instagram

When your request to follow a private Instagram account, if you’ve never had a private Instagram account yourself, you may be wondering what happens when you follow a private Instagram account. The only thing that happens when you follow a private Instagram account is that they get a request in the notifications section saying that you want to follow them.

This request will have the words confirm or delete next to them and they’ll be able to confirm whether they want you to follow them or delete your request. If they need to delete your request, then to follow them again, you’ll have to send them another request. If they do accept your request, then you’ll be able to see their account. Apart from this, nothing else happens when you follow a private Instagram account. They simply just get a notification saying that they’ve requested to follow you. When you tap the follow button, it’ll say requested then once they accept you, it’ll change to following.

Why Instagram Gave Users The Option To Go Private

The first reason why there are private accounts is that the owner of the account can choose who follows them. They can do this by accepting who they want to follow them and rejecting who they don’t want to follow them.

The second reason why people make their account private is that they want to build a sense of mystery, so they can receive more follow requests. You’ll mainly see meme pages do this so that you’re intrigued to see the type of content they upload.

A lot of Instagram admins who own pages with a large number of followers swear that they gain a lot more followers by putting their account on private.

Reid Hailey, the founder of Doing Things, a media company that manages a network of Instagram pages with a collective 14 million followers, says that before one of his large accounts went private, it was growing at an average of 10,000 new followers per week. Once it flipped to private, that number jumped to 100,000.

Are there ways to view a private profile on Instagram without a subscription

A private profile is like a closed door: it means that strangers are not welcome here. You can knock on the door by sending a subscription request, and politely wait until they open it. But it’s not a fact that it will be fast and indeed will be - not everyone needs strangers in subscribers. Therefore, there will always be those who want to play insta-spy and watch content in a private profile without subscribing to it.

According to Yandex, more than 14,000 people are interested in this question every month

What services can be used to view a closed Instagram account*

There are applications and even online services that promise to open the door to someone else's account. Most of them look made on the knee and stuffed with advertising, but what the hell is not joking. We are testing one of these services found outside the Russian Internet. The object of the study was the closed profile of the ex-participant of the notorious "House-2".

There will be no link to the service - below we explain why Entering a link to the profile... Wow, looks like he found something! We are already rubbing our hands Oops! Did you expect something else?

At the end of our short journey, the spy is offered to follow phishing links that have not even been disguised as something more convincing. By clicking on any of these links, we would be taken to a fraudulent site designed to download confidential data.

But there is another way…

It will help you to see some of the old posts in your closed profile on Instagram*. And then, success is not guaranteed. But in our case it worked. We are talking about sites aggregating Instagram * accounts of famous personalities that duplicate content from the profile. The purpose of such sites is to download traffic from search engines and make money on advertising. Account aggregators appear if you simply enter the name you are looking for in conjunction with the word “Instagram *” into Google:

Insta-clones are periodically blocked, but a holy place is never empty

One of these sites displayed posts from a closed account that we checked earlier.

Only text content is available, visuals have sunk into oblivion. Because fresh content in closed accounts is not displayed on any insta-clone. We were convinced of this by checking the profile of Olga Buzova, who closed it once again.

Param-pam-pam… Everything!

Analysis of a closed profile on Instagram*

The content is clear, there is no way to see it. What about reach and engagement statistics? After all, there are cool services for analyzing profiles on Instagram * like DataFan, which help to understand who is in front of us - a popular influencer or a dummy.

Leah Canarskaya , SMM specialist:

Working with bloggers, I often encounter the need to ask them for statistics. Some bloggers “close their account for ads” temporarily, so their placements are delayed until they open. And as a rule, we go to such bloggers after other people's positive reviews. Permanently closed profiles are not even considered by us for advertising, because it is impossible to see any statistics from them.

We have a detailed article on how to choose a blogger to advertise on Instagram*. Influencer experts shared valuable insights.

Why can't I see a closed account?

Instagram* jealously guards the secrets of its users. Draining personal data can turn into a huge reputational scandal, so the company is investing billions in information protection. And if any loophole appears, security engineers quickly eliminate it.

After all, private data should remain private.

Private profile on Instagram - how to view it discreetly

How to view the subscriptions of a private Instagram, as well as the profile itself? In this article, we will give you the simplest and most understandable ways to solve such a problem.

Inexpensive promotion Instagram:

Followers - live and active

Likes - on photos and posts

Views - on video and IGTV

Comments - real with a guarantee

A private Instagram profile - what is it and what cookies does it give

Many Instagram users live for show. They illustrate their every move by posting dozens of photos a day. They share impressions, thoughts and feelings, even the most intimate ones. But some have already seen that excessive openness and activity on the Internet sometimes leads to negative consequences. Photos posted on the network can be used by anyone, as well as records. Therefore, more and more users prefer a private profile on Instagram.

I must say right away: in this social network, you can hide a virtual photo album from prying eyes for free. And the operation is very simple. Moreover, it is available both in a mobile device on any operating system, and in the computer version of the site. In all the details of how to make Instagram private, we understand in another article. And now about what the connection of the function gives, what advantages you will get and whether there are any disadvantages.

Let's compare two types of profiles: normal and hidden. Anyone can see an open page, publications on it, as well as subscriptions and subscribers, for this he does not even need to be an Instagram user. We will tell you how to search for people without registration in this network. A private Instagram profile is only allowed to be viewed by selected followers. Only the main photo (avatar), the owner's nickname and, possibly, a couple of lines of information about him will be in the public domain.

Anyone can subscribe to an open page, for this you do not need to ask permission from its owner. Getting a subscription to a private page is not easy. You must first send a request to a hidden user, and then wait for his approval. By the way, those who are already in his friends will still be included in the profile. And a new subscriber can be ignored.


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