Why you should not let spam “free Instagram follower” accounts follow you on Instagram and what you should do about it if they do?

I am a massive user of Instagram. I use it to share photos of my memories and my holiday trips to my friends and followers. I currently have 3 accounts. One of them is for my digital art and photography, one is public and one is private account. (Who I let follow me depends on me and my friends)

But on an occasion, you can get unwanted followers who follow you for a brief period. For example, you can get accounts which are full of inappropriate content, or contain hate speech i.e white supremacy, or an account which turns out to be an ex from a relationship of your past, and you don’t want them following you- or it could be one of those junk accounts trying to promote fake goods or services to you. Or you could, even worse, have a potential stalker! The best option to stop these accounts is to block them and report them for whatever reason. However, the main Instagram accounts of problem that we are going to talk to you about in this blog is those “Free IG Follower” accounts.

Now, the types of Instagram followers I get are mainly friends, some of them will be strangers (people I don’t know) but that’s alright as long as they don’t harass you, stalk or defame or bully you, or their profile doesn’t contain inappropriate content. Also I get the occasional business profile following me which is okay too.

However, when it comes to accounts that follow and unfollow just to garner attention, these accounts can be a problem, and these accounts are quite annoying. They randomly (and aggressively) follow and unfollow you just to try to get you to follow them. And this is what the “follow me for free followers” accounts is.

Now, with these “Free Instagram Follower accounts” you MUST beware and NEVER do what they tell you to do in order to get free followers and NEVER “buy or purchase” free IG followers. Here’s reasons to why you must not follow these accounts:

1. These “followers” are most likely fake.
2. The links these accounts put out for you to “buy” followers could be potentially dangerous- they either could contain harmful links that could potentially contain malware and upload viruses to your phone and damage your computer but some of these people behind the links they use could actually be tempting you to buy followers so they can scam you of money- very dangerous.
3. You might end up paying for more money than you could get followers. Its just not worth it, especially when most followers are fake and are either spammy accounts, bots or people who are inactive or really don’t care about what you’re trying to promote. And If Instagram deletes those accounts for violating their standards, you are basically gambling away your money.
4. Most importantly, your account could get disabled/deleted as buying likes and followers break their Terms of Service! Not fun losing your account especially your account has lots of memories important and special to you. i.e. your first alcoholic drink, graduation, school ball, holiday/vacation trips, celebrating your 21st or 18th birthday, time out with friends, going on adventures, and more. It’s even worse losing your Instagram account if your’e a blogger, politician, Food blogger, make up blogger, model, celebrity, or a business or a charity/organization (I.e alcohol and drug addiction services/ Animal cruelty prevention/.) Not only does it suck for a person to start all over again, but that person has to re write their memories and as for businesses, they will lose all their followers and less likely to reach their products out to public and this will cost them dearly long term! And services like alcohol and drug addictions also have to put their information relating to their service up again and it will take a very very long time for that info to reach the public!
5. You could lose your followers as your genuine followers would potentially notice a spike in spammy accounts. Also, if Instagram has a purge, and deletes a lot of spam accounts, your followers might notice a sharp drop in followers as Instagram has deleted most of them and THEN it becomes obvious to your followers that you decide to buy “fakes” rather then putting in the hard work to do what you are best at, which is unethical.
6. You are less likely to get noticed. The less engaged your fake followers are with you, the less likely your Instagram will get noticed by others. Also, these fakes will not likely engage with you.

This screenshot shows examples of spammy “free IG (Instagram/Instie) follower” accounts. Note how they use the Instagram icon in a poorly constructed attempt to make themselves appear genuine.

What to do when a spammy “get free IG account” attempts to or follows you:

1. DON’T follow back. You are giving the spam account attention by doing so and therefore encouraging their behavior.
2. BLOCK the account. This will stop them from following and annoying you. Hint: Just mark them “spam” and Instagram automatically blocks the account.
3. MARK the account on instagram as “spam”. While Facebook unfortunately does nothing about spam (they are useless in community standards anyway), Instagram does the opposite of Facebook, in most cases they disable and delete the reported spam account.

That way you will stay safe by reporting and blocking them! Also, remember that getting lots of followers who probably won’t even follow you for long is not worth it over a disabled account, is it? Quality over quantity is important.

There are so many ways to get likes and followers on Instagram. All involve being genuine, hard work and dedication and none involve buying or purchasing followers or using automated means. Just be yourself. Represent who you are on Instagram.

Tip: Remember that there is always the option of having a “business” account for your Instagram needs. You have the option to boost your posts there.

In the future, I will be doing an article on “free Facebook friends and followers” and “free twitter followers” but this article at the moment is solely dedicated to Instagram.

Remember that Instagram is there for you to connect with your friends, family and genuine followers and grow your business/hobby. And enjoy using Instagram- but do so responsibly. BUT STAY SAFE AND PLEASE DO NOT USE THESE BOT “GET FREE IG FOLLOWER” ACCOUNTS.

Hope this helps!