Instagram’s adding some new measures to better protect users from suspicious activity, including new warnings when potentially scammy profiles request to connect, and new alerts if you get tagged or mentioned by an account that you don’t follow in the app.
First off, on IG’s new warnings. Now, when an account that Instagram’s systems detect could be impersonating an individual or business, or may be engaging in otherwise questionable activity, requests to follow you, new pop-up alerts will be displayed to raise awareness of potential scams.
As you can see in these examples, Instagram has a few different new warnings, alerting users to potential issues with accounts that are seeking to connect.
That could be a good way to more directly alert users to potential harms caused by such schemes, with dedicated tags prompting more awareness in relation to specific actions in-stream.
Instagram’s also adding new alerts when users get tagged or mentioned by accounts that they don’t follow, which will prompt people to review and update their safety and privacy settings to ensure that they understand what each tag means, and how they can control the related interaction.
It’s another more direct prompt in-stream, displayed at the time the user becomes aware of the interaction, which could be a more valuable way to maximize awareness around concerns and potential misuse.
Which could be of significant benefit, and it makes a lot of sense for IG to be integrating these alerts more directly, as opposed to leaving it up to users to understand the context of each element, and update their privacy settings in response.
Because research shows that most people simply don’t update their settings. Like, ever. As such, better linking these tools to why they may be useful could get a lot more people actually using them, helping to improve user security.
You can read about Instagram’s latest security prompts here.
