Introduction to Social Media Investigation: A Hands-on Approach, 1st Edition (2015)

Chapter 15. Instagram

Abstract

At its core, Instagram is just a photo-sharing application. Users take photos with their mobile devices, possibly apply some artistic filters to the photos, and then upload them. It is one of the most popular social networking tools. This chapter presents an overview of the different types of information people share on the site and how to find those people.

Keywords

Social media

Social networks

Instagram

Photos

Photo sharing

Case Study Paragon: Saladworks

Earlier, we met Mitch Donaberger, social media manager for Saladworks. Instagram is a platform where Mr. Donaberger finds a lot of information. This is especially true because Saladworks employees are in the core demographic for Instagram and use it frequently.

Figure 15.1 is but one example of how Mr. Donaberger used Instagram to investigate the employee who posted the photo.

FIGURE 15.1 A photo posted by a former Saladworks employee of plastic bags worn over flip-flops in the kitchen.

The employee tweeted that she had worn flip-flops into the Saladworks kitchen: a violation of company policy and health safety laws. To comply, she put bags over the flip-flops, took a photo, and posted it to Instagram. Although she never revealed her name or location on Instagram, Mr. Donaberger was able to cross-reference it against her other social media accounts, identify her name and general location, and ultimately the store she worked in. Within a day, she was fired for damaging the brand through her post.

Instagram Overview

At its core, Instagram is just a photo-sharing application. Users take photos with their mobile devices, possibly apply some artistic filters to the photos, and then upload them.

Posting Photos

Figure 15.2 shows two photos (left) and their Instagram-ed counterparts (right). Note that the Instagram photos are always square, which crops the original images; but the photos on the right have been modified further by filters. Filters can change colors, contrast, focus, add borders, or any number of other visual features.

FIGURE 15.2 The photos on the left are original and the photos on the right are versions with Instagram filters and cropping, and on the lower right, a border.

When a user posts a photo to Instagram, they can add a caption and any number of hashtags. Other users can Like and Comment on the photo. One of the above photos is shown below in Figure 15.3, as it appears to our example user, Malcom.

FIGURE 15.3 Example user Malcom's Instagram post.

Instagram photos can also attach location information. In Figure 15.3, under Malcom's username is the time “1 hour ago,” followed by a pin icon, and the location “Georgetown University.”

Instagram tends to be a real-time sharing platform. People take photos during the course of their daily activities and post them immediately, rather than sharing them later. This makes Instagram a relatively reliable source of information about what a person was doing at a specific time.

Instagram Relationships

Relationships on Instagram are similar to those on Twitter. Users can follow people who they think are interesting, but the relationship does not need to be approved or reciprocal. One exception is that people with private accounts (discussed below, under “Privacy Levels and Access”) have to approve followers since that status grants them access to the user's posts.

Instagram Demographics

Instagram is popular among a younger demographic. Over 35% of people aged 18-29 years use Instagram. The entire user population skews young; Instagram has about 150 million users, and over 90% of them are under 35.

Users also tend to be extremely engaged with the platform, with 70% of users accessing it daily. This is just slightly lower than the percentage of people who check their Facebook accounts everyday and, indeed, for younger users, Instagram is often the primary social media platform they interact with.

Women dominate Instagram, accounting for over ⅔ of users.

Finding People

One of the most important aspects of Instagram is that its primary use is via mobile devices. There is a web interface (seen in Figure 15.3), which displays photos and provides some limited functionality; but most features are exclusive to the app on a mobile device.

Searching for people is one feature that's not available on the Instagram website. There are a few other options to search for a person.

By the Mobile App

First, acquire the smartphone app on either an iPhone or Android device. In order to search, you need to have an account. (Your searches and browsing behavior are not shown to anyone.)

Figure 15.4 shows the Instagram interface on an iPhone. At the bottom of the window is a set of icons. The second icon, a compass rose, takes you to the “Explore” screen. It shows thumbnails of photos and includes a search feature at the top.

FIGURE 15.4 The Explore screen in the Instagram app (iPhone). To access it, tap the compass rose icon (second from the left, at the bottom of the screen). Note the search box at the top of the page.

Tap the search box at the top. From here, you can enter a person's name or username to find them. In Figure 15.5, we searched for “Malcom,” and our example user Malcom Conroy-Smith appears in the search results.

FIGURE 15.5 The search results for our “malcom” search in the Instagram Explore interface.

By Search Services

If you do not want to use the Instagram app, there are a number of websites that allow you to search. A web search for “search Instagram” yields a list of Instagram-searching services, all of which work similarly with app search described above.

These sites also have the convenience of not requiring you to create an Instagram account to use them. One excellent website in this category is http://pinsta.me.

By Username

If you think you know someone's username—for example, if you know their Twitter handle and are testing if their Instagram handle is the same—you can simply enter the web address http://.instagram.com/«USERNAME», where «USERNAME» is replaced with the username you are search for. Thus, our example user Malcom can be found at http://instagram.com/malcomcsmith.

By Social Connections

Another method for finding someone is to search through their social connections.

One way to do this is to find a known associate of the target (using the search techniques described above). On Instagram, the total numbers that a user is following and those who are following the user are public—but unlike many other sites, the actual list of people isn't available.

However, you can select a photo and see the people who have liked or commented on the photo. Figure 15.6 shows an example from the author's Instagram page. Our example user Malcom has liked the image, and another user, “rescueacls,” has both liked it and commented.

FIGURE 15.6 A photo on the author's Instagram page that was liked by “malcomcsmith,” our example user, and another user “rescueacls.”

In Figure 15.6, note that the usernames are links. Click on a username to go to his or her Instagram page. Thus, even without a username or a successful search, you may be able to find someone by investigating interactions on their friends' photos.

The Instagram mobile app does let you browse a person's followers and the people they follow. Figure 15.7 shows the author's Instagram account. In the upper right above the “Following” button are three numbers indicating posts, followers, and people the user is following. Tapping on one of those numbers will take you to a list of the corresponding information. When looking at followers, for example, you can then tap on one of the follower names to see their account information.

FIGURE 15.7 A mobile app view of an Instagram account. Clicking on one of the numbers above “followers” or “following” toward the upper right will take you to a list of people in the corresponding category.

On the web, there are third-party services that will also let you view this information. For example, on pinsta.me, you can enter an Instagram username or search by name. When you find a person, you can browse photos, followers, and people followed in a similar way.

Figure 15.8 shows a search result from a search on pinsta.me. Note the box on the left shows profile information for the user hopper_dog. Clicking on the numbers above “Follower” or “Following” will display a list of users that can, in turn, be clicked to view their profile.

FIGURE 15.8 The pinsta.me website results for user hopper_dog. The large box on the left shows profile information for this user, including clickable numbers for lists of followers and people followed.

Obtaining Data

User Profiles

Once you have located a target, the username will be a point of access. As mentioned above, going to http://.instagram.com/«USERNAME», where «USERNAME» is replaced with the target's actual username, will take you to the target's page.

On a user's profile page, you can see some basic biographical information about them. Figure 15.9 shows example user Malcom's page. There is a short description of himself next to his profile photo (Living in DC with my dog Barley). Users can also include a link to their website. In this case, Malcom has linked to his Facebook page.

FIGURE 15.9 The default, zoomed out map view (left) shows that (2) pictures are geotagged near the same location. Zooming in (right) shows the photos on a map in their geotagged locations.

The real information about a target is in photos and captions. Instagram photos tend to depict moments from everyday life as they happen, so they can say a lot about where a person spends time, what they like to eat, who they go out with, and how they like to present themselves.

Each photo has an associated time, although it's not as precise as on some social media sites. In Figure 15.3, the time of posting is “1 hour ago.” In Figure 15.6, it is “17 months ago.” In Figure 15.7, both photos have a time of “3 hours ago.” This is as precise as time gets for Instagram posts. Thus, while photos are organized in reverse chronological order on a user's page, it's not always possible to have an accurate estimate of the exact time the photo was taken, especially for older pictures. The same is true for comments on photos, which follow the same time scheme.

Hashtags

Hashtags are common on Instagram. As with Twitter and other sites, hashtags can be clicked on to view other images with the same hashtag. Since Instagram photos are generally public—and the community usually views them as publicly shared images (rather than, say, communications with their friends)—hashtags are a way for someone's images to reach a greater audience than their own followers. It is not uncommon to have a dozen or more hashtags on an image. This will not always tell you a lot about the person posting the image, but it will tell you which communities of people on Instagram that they like to interact with.

Social Connections

Social connections can also reveal a lot of information about someone's community, though it is important to remember that relationships are not necessarily reciprocal on Instagram. Just because someone follows another person does not mean they have any kind of relationship. As described above, third-party websites like pinsta.me, or the mobile Instagram app, allow you to view lists of a target's followers and the people he or she follows.

Location Data

Instagram also has a number of location features. As described above, users can add a location to their posts. Figure 15.3 shows an example of this. Those geotagged photos then appear on a map for the user. Figure 15.7 shows the mobile app view of a user's profile page. Note the row of icons above the photos. The third from the left is a location pin icon. Clicking this takes you to a map with the user's photos on it. Figure 15.9 shows the default view of the map for Malcom, zoomed out. Zooming in pinpoints photos at their tagged location.

Instagram does not tag with GPS coordinates, but users can enter general locations (e.g., Washington, DC) or specific ones, like names of restaurants or businesses.

Clicking on the location for a given photo will take you to a page showing other photos tagged with that same location. This can be useful in identifying other people who have posted from the same place.

Privacy Levels and Access

Privacy on Instagram is simple and straightforward. By default, all of a person's photos are shared with the public. Even people who do not have an Instagram account can view them. Similarly, people's profiles are public.

Users have the option to make their Instagram account private. In that case, their photos and information is visible only to a list of approved followers. At the time of writing, Instagram has not released public numbers about what percentage of accounts are private, but rough estimates from independent sources put it at 3-5%.

People can also send direct messages to one another on Instagram. These messages are always private and are only accessible by the sender and recipient.

Case Studies

Civil Cases

Family Law

Family law, as we are seeing in many chapters, is a place where information from social media is frequently used to investigate parties. Lisa Helfend Meyer, a Los Angeles-based family law firm Meyer, Olson, Lowy & Meyers, shared a story of how pictures from Instagram were used in one of her cases.

She represented the father in a case where the mother had a history of substance abuse. The mother claimed to be off drugs and was testing negative for them. Indeed, the mother portrayed herself in court as someone who stayed home every night and led a relatively simple, kid-centric life.

However, the mother also had an Instagram account where she posted frequently.

She shared pictures there of herself partying with people who were using drugs and alcohol. After surveying her Instagram friends, attorneys also discovered that she was friends with someone who worked the facility administering her drug tests.

One technique people use to confuse drug tests is to drink a lot of water. This dilutes urine and can lead to inconclusive tests. In this case, when the mother took a drug test that showed diluted urine, attorneys were able to use her Instagram feed to show that she had recently been out partying with friends—including the one who administered the drug test. They constructed a timeline and presented it to the judge to consider for his custody decision.

Firing

Haley Cousins of Naviga Business Services, a recruitment agency, told me the story of “Jim,” whom she had helped get hired for a job. After starting at his new position, Jim called in sick on a Monday. Later that day, someone in Jim's company who was following his Instagram feed found a picture Jim had just posted, with the caption “Great day at the beach with friends!” Later that day, Jim posted photos that showed him with a drink and playing volleyball with friends.

Jim's boss quickly became aware of the situation. When Jim arrived at work the next day, his boss confronted him with the Instagram photos. Jim was fired shortly thereafter.

Hiring

Instagram does not always lead to doom and gloom, however. David Bitton of PayPanther.com says that his company seeks out nontraditional candidates for their work and almost exclusively hires based on social media presence.

David said his company found a candidate because of this online following, and David explicitly cited his 2500 Instagram photos, as well as his audience of over 1000 followers. This kind of attention to Instagram and other platforms showed that the candidate was influential and that he knew how to productively interact with people online.

Nine months later, David reports their Instagram-hire is the best employee in the office. Finding new candidates through social media is now the company's standard practice.

Criminal Cases

Ephebophile

In May 2014, a 29-year-old man who played Captain America (and, for the purposes of this anecdote, that's what we'll call him) at Universal Studios in Orlando was arrested for sending sexually explicit photos to a 16-year-old girl he met at the theme park.

When the girl visited the park, she took a photo with Captain America and posted it to her Instagram account. Captain America found the photo and commented. That started a friendly relationship between the two, in which Captain America eventuallyescalated, sending pictures of himself naked, sometimes masturbating, and with sexually explicit text.

An investigation on Instagram established a pattern of behavior. Captain America had posted creepy comments on other girls' photos with him, including “Definitely my fav of the day!!” and “You're a sweetie.”¹

Fortunately, Captain America has been forced to retire his shield and uniform; after his arrest, he was fired from his position in Universal Studios.

Smash and Grab Robbery

In a slightly less scandalous story of Instagram arrest, police were able to identify a man who robbed a store, based on his Instagram connection with the business.² In April 2014, a man robbed an e-cigarette store in Boca Raton, Florida. He threw a brick through a window and made off with a backpack full of merchandise.

While reviewing the surveillance footage, the store's staff recognized the burglar as a frequent customer. Police went through the shop's Instagram account where they found photos of the man, including a picture of his driver's license.³ He was later arrested in connection with this robbery—and the robbery of a gas station down the street.

This case is particularly interesting as an investigation example, because it shows how the followers of an account can be searched to reveal information.

Conclusions

Instagram is an extremely popular photo-based social media site, used primarily by a younger audience. The photos people post are almost always publicly available. Since most photos are taken, filtered, and posted all at once from mobile devices, someone's Instagram feed provides a unique view into people's daily activities. Geotagging on images can add an additional layer of insight to the photos themselves.