How IGDetective Works
A plain-language explanation of what we track, how we track it, and what we deliberately don't see.
Written by Steven Duncan, founder of IGDetective.
Steven started building IGDetective in early 2025 after spending months manually tracking an Instagram account to confirm a gut feeling about a relationship — and again later when a family member needed to understand who their teenager was connecting with. The methodology described on this page is how the product actually works in production, not a sanitized version for marketing. Read the full story.
The Short Version
IGDetective takes timed snapshots of public Instagram profiles you choose to track. By comparing one snapshot to the next, we can show you what changed — new follows, new followers, unfollows, stories posted, and engagement patterns — without ever logging into the target account or asking for their password.
What We Track
Follows & followers
The chronological list of accounts they follow and who follows them, with the date we first saw each connection.
Unfollows
Accounts that were present in a previous snapshot and have since disappeared from either list.
Stories
Current stories on a public profile, plus an archive of stories we captured before they expired (Premium).
Engagement signals
Likes and comments that are publicly attached to posts on the tracked profile, used to power Admirers Analysis and DeepSearch.
How Often We Refresh
Free accounts can refresh manually on demand, subject to fair-use limits. Premium accounts get one automatic refresh per tracked profile (up to 5 profiles) every 24 hours, plus unlimited on-demand manual refreshes — so the change history is built up without you having to remember to pull it. The automatic refresh system has been running daily in production since early 2025.
What We Never See
Private content
Direct messages, archived posts, or anything behind a private profile's approval gate.
Your Instagram credentials
We never ask for them and the product never logs in as you or anyone else.
Your identity on Instagram
Tracking is one-way; the profile you watch has no way to see that you're watching.
Accuracy & Limits
Change events are only as fresh as the most recent snapshot — if a profile follows and unfollows the same account between two refreshes, that round-trip won't appear. Very large profiles may have follower lists truncated by Instagram's public surface; we always show the slice we were able to capture and date-stamp it. Our collection follows Instagram's Platform Terms — we only read what's publicly visible. We do not publish a fabricated accuracy percentage.
Editorial & Update Policy
This page is updated when we change how the product collects or surfaces data. Material changes are summarized here with a new Last updated stamp below. Questions about a specific data point are welcome at support@igdetective.com.
Last updated: 2026-05-18