Now let's talk about Instagram Osint.
In the previous lectures, we have seen how we can gather information about a Facebook profile and we
have documented everything that we have gathered.
In this lecture and in the next few lectures, we are going to talk about how you can gather information
from an Instagram account.
Now, Instagram has also a huge user base.
It has over 1 billion monthly active users, and there are many people who have an Instagram account.
And as we know, people use Instagram to post photos and videos, but they cannot post any text posts.
So the first thing we are going to do is to analyze the target profile.
So here I have an example.
Here we have the profile picture the username of this Instagram account, the display name which is
always written in bold, and the description as well as a URL.
So we are going to take the same steps that we have done before to gather information about a Facebook
account.
We are going to save the profile picture and copy the URL to our notes and take a screenshot of the
target page.
So let's have a look at our notes.
We have previously got Rishi Scarborough's Instagram account which is this one.
So I'm going to copy the URL.
And then I'm going to paste it.
And we will see that this page is not available.
So he might have changed his username or might deleted his Instagram account.
So what we can do in this case is to search for Rishi Kabra from within Instagram.
So what I'm going to do is just to type Rishi Kabra.
And here we have many accounts with the name Rishi Kabra and we don't know which Rishi Kabra is the
one that we are looking for.
Now of course, we can have a look at all the pictures and we might find a certain picture that is similar
to the profile pictures that we have seen before.
But let's have a look at our notes again.
Now he always used the name Rishi Kabra as his username, but we have one more information, which is
if we looked at the URL of his Facebook profile, we can see that he has the name Rishi Raj Cobra.
So he has a middle name which is Raj.
So if we went to Instagram and search for Rishi Raj Cobra then we will only get one account and he also
has a similar profile picture.
So I believe that this is him.
We cannot see his eyes, but we can see by looking at his beard and his hair that this might be the
person that we are looking for.
In addition to that, he used the name Rishi Kabra in his description.
This is the display name.
This is the user name.
And we can see the number of posts that he had and followers and following.
Now, the reason why it's important to create an identity or a sockpuppet account is because if we know
that we are looking for a person that is from India, then I might create an identity that is from India,
that is also from Kolkata, that has also studied in the SRM University.
And if I try to follow him on his Instagram account and he saw all of these information in my description
or in my bio, then he might accept my follower request and then I will be able to see all of his posts.
But for now, I'm going to get the information that we have seen so far.
So I'm going to copy the URL and then I'm going to add a new subnodes.
And I'm going to call it Instagram and then hit enter.
So I'm going to say the URL is this one.
And then I'm going to download the profile picture and upload it to my notes.
So to do this I'm going to hover over his profile picture and then right mouse click.
And then I'm going to say open Image and new tab.
And this is going to open an image which is not a high resolution image.
And we can see that it is 320 by 320 pixels.
But I'm going to download it.
I'm going to put it in my desktop.
And then I'm going to my notes and upload this image.
After finding basic information about our target, the next thing we can do is to find the user ID of
this profile.
Similar to Facebook, every Instagram or Facebook account has a unique identifier that gets generated
once an Instagram profile is created.
So if our target has changed his profile picture his name, his username and everything.
You will still be able to find his account with his user ID because he cannot change this ID.
So to find the ID, all you have to do is to visit the page of the target and then click on control
U to view the page source, and then search for the word profile underscore id.
So to find the user id, all we have to do is to visit the target profile.
And then right mouse click and then view page source.
And then you can say Ctrl F and say or search for the word profile ID.
So for some reason, Firefox will always highlight a different text than the one that we have searched
for.
And you can see the ID in here.
Even if you have tried to copy it, it's not going to copy it for some reason, and it's going to copy
another text.
For example, I can say paste and you can see that it has copied and pasted another thing.
So what I can do is use Chrome, because Chrome is way better than using Firefox to find the ID, or
I can just open my notepad and then write the ID that I found.
So this is the user ID.
Now I'm going to go to my notes and add the user ID, which is the one that we found just in case he
changed his information.
Now if you would like to find the user ID automatically and not use the manual way, then you can use
a website like Fame Swap that.
I'm going to add it to the resources of this lecture, and all you have to do is just to enter the username
of the Instagram profile.
And then I'm going to click on Find User ID.
And here is the user ID, which is the exact same user ID that we have found before.
Now let's say that your target has changed his username, his profile picture and his display name,
and you only have the user ID.
So to find the account again you can go to this website that's called Comment Picker that will I will
also add it to the resources of this lecture.
And then you want to add the ID and then you want to solve this captcha and then say search Instagram
username.
And now it will show you the username of this user ID.
So I can click on it and it will open his profile again.
So even if he changed his username, profile picture and display name, I will still be able to track
this account again because I have his user id.
So in this video we have learned how we can gather basic information about the target, how we can analyze
their profiles and save the required information like their profile picture, their username, display
name and taking screenshot.
And we have also learned how we can get the user ID just in case they have changed their information.