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.
What to Do If You Have InstaAgent Installed
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.
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.