How To Stop Ig Hoot
How to Stop Inappropriate Follow Requests on Instagram
Allyson asks:
Hi, despite many attempts to contact Instagram, I cannot seem to get any clarity on this issue. My son, who is entering middle school, has a private Instagram account which I monitor. Several times per week, he receives really inappropriate follow requests from “people” he doesn’t know containing semi-nude women, posing sexually with graphic hashtag lines. I have deleted these requests, blocked them, reported some to Instagram and received notices that they have been taken down. I have repeatedly asked how to stop receiving these follow requests, but have received no answers. You can’t call Instagram and they haven’t responded to my online inquiries. My son is not searching pornography and he knows that I am logged into his account at all times, so I received all of his notifications directly to my phone. Any ideas???? This is maddening!
Here are a few points to this question that need to be addressed for ALL PARENTS before we get knee deep into Instagram settings.
1. “My son, who is entering middle school” – We do not recommend Instagram for middle school aged children. Instagram used to be a “safer” social network but changes made to better compete with Snapchat prevents us from being able to recommend it any longer. However, even when it was a “safer” social network in regards to content, Instagram still had its share of problems.
2. “Several times per week, he receives really inappropriate follow requests from “people” he doesn’t know containing semi-nude women, posing sexually with graphic hashtag lines. ” – This is one of the many problems with social media. You can teach your child what is appropriate/inappropriate behavior on social media, but that doesn’t prevent against unsolicited incoming messages.
3. “You can’t call Instagram and they haven’t responded to my online inquiries. ” – We completely understand your frustration and anger. Social media networks are generally slow to respond and have little to offer in terms of support. Why? Because your son is their product, not their customer. Businesses paying for advertisements and analytical data are their customers. As long as the “offense” isn’t significant enough to impact their product availability (users switching to other social networks), they have very little incentive to change.
There are several privacy settings you can utilize to limit the amount of spam follow requests. Most spam follow requests are created by spam bots crawling around Instagram looking for potential targets. It has its own name: Instaspam.
Step 1: Set your account to private
This is the first step to protecting your account (and it sounds like you have already set the account to private). With a private account, you approve or deny requests to follow your page. Only your followers can view your posts. Even if you use a popular hashtag, your posts will not be displayed publicly. This prevents spammers from finding your account based on publicly displayed posts and posts using popular hashtags.
Keep in mind, setting your account to private does NOT prevent people from sending photos to you even if they are not following you. Instagram provides instructions on how to set your account to private for both Android and iOS.
Step 2: Turn off similar account suggestions
When you tap follow on someone’s Instagram account you are given suggestions for other account you may also want to follow. Likewise, your account may show up as a suggestion to other individuals including spammers. Spammers can use this feature to follow public account and gain suggestions for public and private accounts they should also follow. Disabling similar account suggestions will make your account less visible but it is a two-way street. You will no longer be displayed as an account and you will no longer receive suggested accounts to follow.
Contrary to Instagram’s help pages, this feature can only be disabled on a desktop browser, as far as we can currently tell. This feature does not appear on iOS or Android profile screens.
How to disable similar account suggestions
After logging into your account, click on the user icon on the top right of the screen.
This will bring you to your account screen where you will click on the ‘Edit Profile‘ button.
At the bottom of your ‘Edit Profile‘ screen, you will see a checkbox next to ‘Similar Account Suggestions‘. Uncheck the checkbox and click Submit to complete the update.
Step 3: Think carefully before commenting and following
The likelihood of being targeted by spammers is also influenced by your son’s behavior. Posting comments and following other Instagram accounts exposes his account. If he posts a comment on a public account, clicking on his username in the comment links to his Instagram account. Following a public account exposes his account to spammers in the ‘followers’ list. Posting a comment on a picture that has a popular hashtag that is targeted by spam bots can quickly trigger an inappropriate follow request by a spam bot.
Consider carefully who you allow your son to follow. We recommend that teenagers only follow people with whom they maintain an offline relationship. Friends at school, neighbors, adults they know, etc with one degree of separation. We recommend that teens limit the number of public accounts they follow. Additionally, following very public figures opens them up as a potential spamming target.
This is only speculation on our part, however, we think there is a correlation between the quality/types of the accounts followed and the amount of spam follow requests received.
Step 4: Report to Instagram and Block the user account
As you have seen, this will only have limited effectiveness. Blocking the user account will prevent that user account from seeing your sons account. However, this has no effect on other spam accounts.
Reporting the content to Instagram will likely have little to no effect. Instagram’s community guidelines prohibits nudity, however, they use a very narrow definition that includes only “photos, videos, and some digitally-created content that show sexual intercourse, genitals, and close-ups of fully-nude buttocks. ” Semi-nude and posing provocatively is not likely in violation of the community guidelines.
Will this solve your problem?
Following these steps should reduce the amount of spam requests your son receives. However, it will not put a stop to them completely. Accidental viewing of inappropriate content is one of the many costs associated with allowing young teens on social media. Remember you son is the product, not the customer.
Thanks, Allyson!
Do you have a question like Allyson? Go ahead and ask! We do our best to answer all questions because if you have a question there are likely other parents out there with the same question.
Do you have any tips or tricks to add to our suggestions? Leave a comment with your best strategies for avoiding instabots.
Pestered by Instagram Bots? Here’s What You Can Do – AdvertiseMint
You are here: Home / Instagram / Pestered by Instagram Bots? Here’s What You Can DoAnne Felicitas, editor at AdvertiseMint, company for Facebook ads
Phil Desforges
If you use your Instagram account for marketing purposes, you must avoid bots like the plague.
Although bots boost follower count, artificially giving you clout, they will bring more problems than it’s worth. Not only do they cheapen your brand, but they also signal to prospective partners that you are not trustworthy.
A bad image isn’t the only problem bots bring. Bots also inflate marketing costs. If you’re running an Instagram ad that targets your followers, most of which are bots, you are paying for ads shown to accounts that will never convert because they’re not real people.
Of course, you likely aren’t paying for a third-party to provide you with fake bot followers. Maybe, instead, you receive unwanted followers from bots. If that’s the case, here’s what you can do.
Agence Olloweb
Before you begin your crusade against bots, you must first learn how to identify them rather than blindly taking action against innocent accounts—this isn’t the Salem witch hunt. Search for the biggest red flag, the post to followers ratio. An account that has no posts but has thousands of followers is a bot. Why would thousands of users follow an account that doesn’t produce content? Very suspect indeed.
Example of a bot with no posts.
Beware, however, because some bots do post content to their feeds, but there’s a way to differentiate them from real accounts. Bot accounts post random, low-quality images while still having thousands of followers. If you see that, steer clear.
If you don’t want bots in your follower list (trust me, you don’t), remove them from your account. Find the bot from your list of followers. If the bot is a recent follower, it should appear first in the list. Click the three dots next to the bot’s profile then click “Remove” to expel it from your list of followers. Doing so, however, won’t stop the bot from finding your profile and following you again. If you want to prevent that, you must block the account.
To block a bot account, visit the bot’s profile then click the three dots on the upper-right corner of the screen. Click “block. ” This will block the account and consequently remove it from your followers list. When you block the account, it can’t find your profile, posts, or Stories, and it can’t follow you again. The account won’t be notified that you blocked it.
If you want to take an action that punishes the bot account, that prevents it from scamming other users like you, then you can take a more drastic action by reporting the account to Instagram. Instagram’s team will investigate, and if they determine the account to be a spam bot that violates its community guidelines, then they will take action and notify you. Instagram won’t notify the bot account that you reported it.
To report an account, click the three dots on the upper-right corner of its profile then choose “spam. ” Reporting the account won’t remove it from your followers list and won’t stop it from visiting your profile. If you want to sever all ties, you must either remove the bot or block it.
Bot accounts have pestered users for years, creating such an annoyance that Instagram is finally removing fake likes and follows generated by bots. But that great bot purge doesn’t occur overnight. If you want to take matters into your own hands, remember what I taught you: remove, block, or report.
Anne Felicitas, editor at AdvertiseMint, company for Facebook ads
Comments comments
3 Ways to Stop Auto Following on Instagram – wikiHow
Download Article
Have you noticed that you’re suddenly following a bunch of random Instagram accounts? This usually happens when spammers get control of your account. To prevent your Instagram account from automatically following others, you’ll need to make sure nobody can access your account but you. This wikiHow teaches you how to stop automatically following Instagram accounts by removing access to connected apps and updating your password.
1Go to and sign in. Before changing your password, make sure no unauthorized apps have permanent access to your account. You’ll need to complete these steps in a web browser, but you can do so on a computer, phone, or tablet. [1]
2
Click your profile icon or picture. You’ll see this in the top right corner of the page.
3Click the settings icon. You’ll see the gear icon next to “Edit Profile” in the middle of the page when it opens.
4Click Apps and Websites. You’ll see this in the menu on the left side of the page under “Change Password. ”
5
Click Remove under suspicious apps or websites you want to remove from Instagram. You’ll see two tabs: “Active” and “Expired. ” On the Active tab, remove any apps or websites that have access to your Instagram account that you don’t recognize.
For example, you can link your Instagram and TikTok account, so you’ll see that here. If you’ve used a bot in the past to get followers, you’ll see that here as well. [2]
Now that you’ve disabled unauthorized accounts, continue on to change your password in the mobile app or in a web browser.
Advertisement
1
Open Instagram. The app icon is a camera inside a square that’s a gradient from yellow to purple. You can find this on your home screen, in the app drawer, or by searching.
If you don’t know the password, you can learn more about resetting your password by reading How to Change Your Instagram Password.
2Tap the profile icon (Android) or your profile picture (iOS). You’ll see this in the bottom right corner of your screen.
3Tap the ☰ menu. You’ll see this in the top right corner of your screen.
4Tap Settings. You’ll see this at the bottom of the menu.
5Tap Security. This is next to the icon of a shield with a checkmark inside it, under “Privacy. ”
6Tap Password. This is usually the first listing in the menu next to the icon of a key.
7Enter your current password. To change your password, you need to enter the current one correctly in the “Current password” text field.
8
Enter your new password twice. You’ll need to enter your password and confirm it correctly before you can continue. If you misspell your password between the two entries, you’ll need to re-enter it again before you can proceed.
Make sure your new password is at least 8 characters long and contains a combination of letters, numbers, and symbols.
9
Tap the checkmark. You’ll see this in the upper right corner of your screen. You can only press this if your current password is correct and your new passwords match.
You’ll get an email confirmation that you’ve changed your password.
1Go to and sign in. You can change your password on a Windows or Mac desktop as well as the mobile browser.
3Click the settings icon. You’ll see the gear icon in the middle of the page when it opens.
4Click Change Password. This is usually the first listing on the menu.
5Enter your current password. To successfully change your password, you need to enter your current one correctly in the “Current password” text field.
6
7
Click Change Password. You can only click this if your current password is correct and the new passwords match.
Ask a Question
200 characters left
Include your email address to get a message when this question is answered.
Submit
About This Article
Article SummaryX1. Open Instagram.
2. Tap the profile icon (Android) or your profile picture (iOS).
3. Tap the three-line menu icon.
4. Tap Settings.
5. Tap Security.
6. Tap Password.
7. Enter your current password.
8. Enter your new password twice.
9. Tap the checkmark icon.
Did this summary help you?
Thanks to all authors for creating a page that has been read 192, 108 times.
Is this article up to date?
Frequently Asked Questions about how to stop ig hoot
How do you stop spamming on Instagram?
How to limit spam on your Instagram accountStep 1: Set your account to private. … Step 2: Turn off similar account suggestions. … Step 3: Think carefully before commenting and following. … Step 4: Report to Instagram and Block the user account.
How do I stop bot followers on Instagram?
If you don’t want bots in your follower list (trust me, you don’t), remove them from your account. Find the bot from your list of followers. If the bot is a recent follower, it should appear first in the list. Click the three dots next to the bot’s profile then click “Remove” to expel it from your list of followers.Nov 30, 2018
How do I stop automatic followers?
About This ArticleOpen Instagram.Tap the three-line menu icon.Tap Settings.Tap Security.Tap Password.Tap the checkmark icon.Jan 20, 2020
