How Lurk works
Lurk watches public Instagram accounts and records who they start and stop following. It's built for people who keep an eye on a space: brand and social teams tracking competitors, creators following collaborators, agencies watching clients' markets.
Where the data comes from
Lurk reads publicly available profile information through a third-party public-data provider. We never log in to Instagram as you, and we never ask for your Instagram password. Lurk only shows information that's already public on Instagram. Private accounts can't be tracked — we detect them and tell you before you add one.
Frequent checks
- Weekly: every hour
- Monthly: every 2 hours
- Yearly: every 3 hours
An account whose following count hasn't changed for 2 days is checked half as often. As soon as a check sees the count move, it goes straight back to your plan's schedule.
Each check looks at the profile first. When the following count goes up, Lurk reads the newest follows at the top of the list. Any other change — and every 3 days regardless — gets a pull of the full following list, compared with the last one. The regular full pull catches “swaps”, where someone unfollows one account and follows another, leaving the count unchanged.
Why our unfollows are accurate
- A list only counts if it's complete: at least 98% of the account's following count, with pagination that finished normally.
- An incomplete list is retried once and then thrown away. It's never used to decide anything.
- A follow shows up as soon as we see it. An unfollow has to be confirmed: missing from two complete checks in a row, or missing once while the following count drops by exactly the same number.
- We show when a change happened as a window — “between 2:10 and 3:10 PM” — because that's what we actually know. We don't claim exact times.
- Everything is keyed on Instagram's permanent account ID, so a username change shows up as a rename, not an unfollow and a follow.
“My account” — free
Request your data from Instagram (Accounts Center → Your information and permissions → Download your information → Followers and following, JSON format, all time). Upload the ZIP to Lurk. It's opened in your browser; only the two username lists — followers and following — are sent to us. Upload again later to see who unfollowed you since last time.
Do they know?
No. Lurk doesn't interact with the accounts you watch in any way. There's nothing for them to see.
Lurk is not affiliated with Instagram or Meta.