Just a couple of days ago the alarms were going off. Dozens of users on Twitter claimed to have seen an Instagram login in a city they have never been to. Others have even claimed that this login was done through a Samsung G935F mobile, that is, a Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge. But what truth is there in all this? Have they accessed our account without consent? We see it below.
No, they have not accessed your Instagram account (at least for now)
Don't worry, they haven't accessed, at least for the moment, your Instagram account. Unlike other apps, Instagram's location system works by IP addresses. This means that the application uses the IP address of our data or WiFi network to position the mobile phone or electronic device from which we have accessed. The problem with this method is that it is not always correct with the actual location of the device.
when I saw that the samsung SM-G935F had entered my instagram but the rest of humanity also //t.co/Fs70VF9J6K
- Campi (@pablocampillo_) March 31, 2020
As a general rule, IP addresses are associated with a specific geographical area. With the saturation of current IPv4 addresses, companies tend to use dynamic addresses to avoid the collapse of their lines . To reduce latency, operators often make use of addresses close to the subject's geographic position. Despite this, it may be the case that an IP address comes from an area that is several hundred kilometers from our town.
Checking it is as simple as accessing the iplocation.com website. The page in question will provide us with the public IP address of our equipment and its location. In our case, the position of the IP address coincides with the geographical position in which we are, although this will not always be the case. If the tool positions us in a different place than our real location, we can check the Instagram history to compare both results .
And what about the Samsung G935F device?
In this case, we can find ourselves faced with an unauthorized login. A few months ago we first warned of the danger posed by follower tracking tools. Applications such as "Who stops following me on Instagram", "Who has seen my profile" and, in general, any unofficial Facebook application that requires Instagram data to function.
On the left, a proprietary login screen. On the right, the official Instagram login screen.
These types of applications are not only false, but also have their own access gateway that obtains the user's Instagram access data without encryption , data that, on the other hand, is entered by the user himself. Later this information is used to sell banks of followers to certain services that promise to sell 1,000, 10,000 or even 100,000 followers at the price of gold.
Of course, from tuexperto.com we completely advise against using any unofficial application . No tool will be able to provide us with information about our followers due to the limitations of the Instagram API.
Changing your password and activating 2-Step Verification is recommended
The best protection barrier against this type of practice is to change the password and activate the two-step verification, a method that requires the introduction of a code sent via SMS to access Instagram . Both options are found in the Security section in Settings.
In the case of two-step verification, we can choose to use a Google Authenticator type application instead of SMS to access our Instagram account. Any method will suffice.