Malicious App ‘InstaAgent’ Axed from the App Store

InstaAgent, an app that claims to let you see people who have viewed your Instagram profile, has been removed from the iOS App Store after a developer discovered that it was storing user names and passwords of Instagram users on a suspicious remote server.

Instead of letting you see who’s looked at your profile, as promised, a developer from the company Peppersoft, based in Germany, found that the app was not only storing user names and passwords but was also making unauthorized spam posts to user’s Instagram profiles by using the stored credentials to log into their accounts.

According to the Peppersoft developer, InstAgent was the most popular app that contained malware in the iOS App Store and had been downloaded over half a million times. The app had become fairly popular in the US, but InstAgent was one of the top apps in both UK and Canada.

What to Do If You Have InstaAgent Installed

It’s no surprise that for those of you who have the app installed, I advise deleting it immediately as well as changing your Instagram password.

Unfortunately, there are still a lot of people that use the same password for everything, so if your Instagram password is the same as your online bank login, you really need to go change that password as well. Better yet, go check out a password management app like 1PassWord or LastPass that will generate and help you securely store passwords for your different online accounts. They are easy to use and it will be beneficial for you to stop using the same password you’ve had since your 16th birthday. And for Pete’s sake, if your password for anything is either “password” or “12345” change it immediately or you can bet it’s just a matter of time before you get hacked.

In the past, Instagram has not only urged users not to give third party apps that don’t follow their guidelines login credentials, but they have also recommended against even installing the app. According to Instagram, those apps are “likely an attempt to use your account in an inappropriate way” just like InstaAgent has. Like most anything, social media services like Instagram are fantastic when they are used the right way, but it seems that the obsessive desire for many to know what others are doing online has created an avenue for apps like InstaAgent to take advantage of people.

There are tons of third party apps that promise all sorts of things to Instagram users. My advice, if you don’t want your username and password to end up on a random server on the other side of the world, the next time you find yourself in a situations where you so desperately need to know who might have clicked on your profile or worse you feel like you need an app that promises to give you hundreds of Instagram followers, put your phone down, take a deep breath and walk away. Trust me, you’ll thank me later.