Teenage Instagram Users Are Exposing Their Personal Information To Access The Platform’s Business Analytics (Report)

Young Instagrammers are turning their personal accounts into business accounts so they have access to the platform’s comprehensive post analytics. That may not sound like a big deal, but the issue is, a business account must publicly display contact information like a phone number or email address.

David Stier, a privacy and security-focused independent data analyst, told Bloomberg that millions of young Instagram users, particularly teenagers, are exposing their personal information to the public in order to get Instagram’s business account analytics charts. Those charts offer measurements like what days and times people view their Instagram posts, which posts are most popular, and some demographic information about the people who visit their profile. (The minimum age to sign up for an Instagram account is 13.)

Stier examined more than 200,000 accounts, and says he found a number of teenage users with business accounts — and therefore with their personal information displayed — define themselves as nonprofits or professional athletes. But when he reviewed their information, they appeared to just be regular users, some with less than 1,000 followers.

For those who don’t know, a business account has buttons below the bio that can offer things like ‘Call,’ ‘Email,’ and ‘Directions.’ Clicking ‘Call’ will let a person directly call the number linked to that button; clicking ‘Email’ will directly send an email to the linked email.

Of course, it’s possible that some of these teenagers (or any other user signing up for a business account) could be using a burner email or phone number not linked to any of their personal information like their first or last name or age. They could simply verify that email or phone number once and then never check again. But there’s also the possibility that some users are giving legitimate contact information that’s connected to their full names, their general locations via things like phone area code, or even their home addresses, if their data is somehow linked to their physical address.

Instagram told Bloomberg that it allows anyone to convert their Instagram account to a business account “because we want anyone to be able to start a small business, if they wish to. During the setup process, we remind people that their contact information will be accessible to others, and allow them to update or hide that information.”

After Stier contacted Instagram with his findings, Instagram apparently made business accounts’ contact information less prominent. But when we checked some business accounts, the ‘Call’ and ‘Email’ buttons appear to be unchanged.

While it’s risky for young users to expose bona fide personal information on the net, it’s understandable that they want access to analytics (particularly with Instagram running tests where it nixes public likes and video views). People want to know how well their posts are doing, and some platforms provide that to regular accounts — YouTube and Twitter, to name a couple. For his part, Stier said Instagram could add a fill-in-the-blanks contact form like some websites have, where information entered in the form would be sent to the user’s email without revealing the user’s personal information to senders. That way, users could have access to useful analytics, but also protect their information.

Stier’s findings hearken back to this report from Taylor Lorenz at The Atlantic, where she investigated brands direct-messaging young teens on Instagram to conduct business with them — namely, getting them to hawk products for cheap.