We cannot deny that Instagram is one of the most used and popular social networking platforms in recent years, something that continues to grow. Obviously, the company tries to keep its users active and engaged on a daily basis with its social network. For this very reason, it uses a policy of deleting inactive accounts when certain criteria are met. Do you want to know What can avoid that eliminate our bill of instagram for this reason? We will tell you a little below.
The problem with this is that if our account were deleted, we would lose all our posts, the policy in question affects all users, regardless of how popular they are.
So, the big question would be, how long should it take for Instagram to apply this policy to my account? What should I do to avoid it? We will investigate this topic below.
What accounts does Instagram consider inactive?
Actually, Instagram, like any other social network. It has a user agreement, which we can read, as soon as we create our account, which we must consider to avoid different sanctions.
Basically, this would be the Terms of Use, which we accept when creating our account and, in most cases, nobody reads it or pays enough attention. However, it is not so complicated that we are sanctioned for violating any of these terms.
The social network makes use of quite complex algorithms to scan its users’ content, activity and various other things in order to keep everything in order. For example, Instagram may automatically remove certain content if it is found to be inappropriate content. Even if the content is inappropriate or violates any of its terms of use, the data is saved in case it needs to be used later. They can even delete an account for any reason stated above.
However, we shouldn’t worry too much about deleting accounts either. Unless we are violating the rules of the social network constantly, more than a warning, we will not receive. However, we have to consider a few things to avoid being marked as an inactive account.
- Date the account was created.
- Last time we logged in.
- Whether the account shared any content.
- If we have interacted with other accounts.
- We do have followers.
How to stop them from deleting my Instagram account
Yes, Meta (the parent company behind Instagram) can remove an inactive account. However, they are actually quite relaxed on this topic, not that they are too strict and if we go a day without using it they will delete our account, even if we go two weeks without using it.
Actually, we can see it in the same terms of use that we discussed earlier. Here it is stated that an account that reaches 90 days without activity is considered inactive. However, the company usually does not remove accounts that meet this requirement, it takes a little longer.
However, it is encouraged that before the 3 months, you log in and use the account for something, it doesn’t really matter what. Simply by logging in and giving a like, we could say that this “timer” is reset. Even just logging in should be enough.
Despite there being no official statements, there are several users who consider that the social network deletes accounts permanently after 1 to 2 years of inactivity. Although from here we recommend not to risk it.
Prevent them from deleting my Instagram account
So we come to a simple conclusion. If we want to avoid deleting our Instagram account due to inactivity, we will have to use it. We don’t have to use it every day. We can log in once every 2-3 weeks and that’s it. And if we do some activity, maybe leave some comment, give a few likes and then we exit, our account will not be marked as inactive in any way.
Can I use the username of an inactive account?
On many occasions we cannot choose a specific username because someone else has already claimed it. So we have to settle for adding some additional character or disguising it in some way, it has happened to all of us on different platforms.
However, it is quite common to find accounts with usernames that are completely inactive. Does this mean that we can use them?
If an account has a username that we want and it’s inactive, we can report it to Instagram. When the staff of the social network check the account, they will make a report on whether it should be deleted or not. In case of being deleted, we could take that username.
However, we must consider that the social network takes a long time to review the accounts reported for this reason. They might even consider that the account is not actually inactive and not delete it.
Likewise, we will see how to report an account that we consider to be active.
- We will search for the account and check its status.
- We will have to see how many posts it has, followers and people following the account.
- Important to check your profile picture. Do you have any?
- We should also review tagged images if possible.
In case the account does not have any profile pictures, posts or fails to gain followers and does not follow other users, we can report it for removal. Even if you have some posts, but they are too old and too few followers, we can do it.
We’ll have to email the Instagram team. In this email, we are going to explain in a very detailed and clear way the situation and the reason why we want to report the account, it is essential to tell the truth about the matter. We will have to send the email to support@instagram.com
We must consider that it may take a prudent time for the Meta team to review an account, so we will have to wait.
