A friend of mine was surprised to find out that she sent a funny Instagram video to a colleague through WhatsApp, and he received a suggestion to follow her.

Initially, she thought it was because WhatsApp and Instagram are owned by the same company. However, that’s not actually the case. The same thing would happen if she shared it through any other channel.

The technology mainly relies on the use of the ‘share button.’ The share button adds extra parameters to the post URL, which users usually do not notice or pay attention to.

Share option is indeed convenient and helps you quickly choose who to share with, what messaging app to use, etc. But it also allows Instagram to monitor who you’re sharing to, what content you share with different groups, and how they engage with it (how often they open your shared content, how long they watch, and so on).

Example

Here are some concrete examples I tried using my own Instagram account to demonstrate. I chose one video and three different ways to share it.

• Using an app and logged in, I got this: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C8q-L2XJPeC/?igsh=M2dmMGZiMTZ2bGEy
• Sharing the same video from my account on a desktop computer, also logged in: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C8q-L2XJPeC/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA
• Sharing via a mobile browser without being logged in: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C8q-L2XJPeC/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet

The actual video is shown here: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C8q-L2XJPeC, and everything that comes after is the tracking parameters. This follow of tracking uses the GET method, where additional data is appended to the URL after the “?” symbol.

But what do these parameters after the “?” actually mean?

First example

In the first example, we see the parameter “igsh,” which stands for “Instagram share ID“. It looks like a random string of characters (M2dmMGZiMTZ2bGEy), but within their system, this parameter clearly indicates details like who shared it, possibly when, from which location, etc.

What appears to us as “M2dmMGZiMTZ2bGEy” actually contains a lot of information we may not even realize we are sharing along with the video.

Not convinced? Try sending the first link I posted to someone via WhatsApp, and that person will probably receive a notification to follow me.

Second example

The utm_source parameter appears as “ig_web_copy_link“, which indicates the platform from which I shared the link (web browser). It also passes the “igsh” parameter, allowing the system to identify me.

Third case

And finally, in the third example, the only data transferred from the unlogged-in Instagram is the link to the video and the general browser type itself, marked as “ig_web_button_share_sheet“

Solution

If you want to share something without being monitored, you have to strip all additional parameters. In this example, it would look like this: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C8q-L2XJPeC

Everyone uses the GET method for tracking.

Try searching for a product on Google and clicking on a sponsored ad. You’ll see how many parameters are included in the GET request (everything after “?”), even though the product URL itself remains fairly short.

Example:

I searched for a washing machine from Miele.

Clicked on the sponsored link and got his

Complete url looks like this:

Although the useful part is only this one:

But you see, I left some GET parameters as a useful part. They are used by the Miele website to determine what machines are available at the moment and to sort them by relevance.