How do you stop your contacts from finding you on Instagram?

[travis82]

So today, I discovered my Aunt just followed me on Instagram.

This is a shock to me.

My Instagram has personal details about me, ( gay stuffs, gay hashtags, gay pride pictures)

I don't follow any of my friends, relatives on Instagram.

I follow mainly strangers ( cute, hot gay guys) on Instagram.

And my followers are complete strangers , (mainly cute, hot gay guys.)


My facebook account is where I connect with my friends and relatives.


But Instagram is like Grindr to me. I use it to search and look at pictures of hot guys.

Hence I don't want to follow or be followed by any of my friends/relatives.


I wonder how my Aunt discovered my Instagram account.


I think it's the WhatsApp and phone contacts lists from my phone that enable her to find my Instagram account.


But I didn't use my mobile number to sign up for my Instagram account.

So it's most likely through WhatsApp that she find my Instagram.


My aunt is one of my contacts from WhatsApp.


I didn't use my real name for my Instagram user name.



So what should I do now?


I don't really wish to make my Instagram private because that means cute, gay guys will not be able to see my pictures.


I'm afraid that my many other contacts/friends from WhatsApp will discover my Instagram account.


Should I delete my WhatsApp?

 

[MrRochesterNY]

Travis, your question would take up much less screen space if you didn't separate each sentence with one or more blank lines.

 

[ElmosToe]

Generally, if they are not in my eyes, I keep my contacts properly stored in something like this.

 

[SaskGuy]

I have one so I can follow sexy pages/people who set their page to private. I don't have anything posted.

What I did was make an account using an email address that's not associated with my main stuff, I didn't link it to Facebook, and I didn't use a username that even remotely resembles my name, username, or anything that I would come up with.

That's enough, right? unless there's some way people can find out. I try not to link everything together, I keep accounts separate, no matter what they are.

 

[NotHardUp1]

I would just tell my aunt that I use Instagram for sexual purposes and that I'd prefer to keep my sex life away from my family and vice versa.

 

[USEDCAR]

When i was young and posted crazy things on facebook i had two separate accounts one for friends and the other one for family and professonal people.


Look under settings i think theres a way you can approve who follows you.

 

[Kyanimal]

I do not do social network stuff like Facer, MyBook, TwitSpace, or InstaIn, LinkedGram, let alone Grind4Adam, or Plenty of Craigs.

Problem solved.

 

[medic1]

^Just this.

 

[Damian]

I'm very successful in keeping people I don't want contacting me on social media sites away. I don't join these sites. Easy peasy.

 

[EJMichaels]

I think the connection could be made between Instagram and other parts of your online life because you have to set it up and post from your mobile device and that is connected to other accounts.

If you want to play around online, stopping using the apps or setting them to private viewing is obviously not an attractive option. As an erotica author, I try to boost my online presence while at the same time minimizing any online traces of my real identity; I put considerable effort into making sure there are no overlaps by creating extra accounts (not just email addresses).

There are many accounts that could inadvertently become linked at level you didn't intend -- using mobile apps, Google, Facebook, Amazon, and others that try to gather your accounts and allow you to log into other services and apps from them. Some directly offer to find your friends, but others quietly make the connections without telling you. Apps often specify the permissions they want when you install them, and your address book is commonly on that list.

Other connections -- if you are logged into a Google account and then do anything else, like post comments in a blog or get a map, you are still connected to your Google account. When I print maps from Google, I have to first remember to log out of my author account because it has my pen name on the page. I once accidentally followed a vanilla friend's blog when logged in to the "wrong" account. You have to be vigilant if you're doing things online that you need to keep separate.

 

[PrinceCory]

I'm a new user of Instagram (less than a month). I do not have WhatApp, but I do have a facebook account. When I signed up I was given a list of Facebook users that I could follow on Instagram. Since Facebook owns all 3 of these apps, my guess is they are all able to connect these accounts. I too have had my Facebook friends follow me on Instagram. So I made my Instagram private, but would like a better solution.

There is probably some privacy switch in Facebook that will list the Apps that are connected to my Facebook...maybe that is the place to disconnect??