How to Change Instagram IP Address

Instagram is of course one of the most popular social media sites on the planet.  It’s transformed itself from a simple photo album site to one of the most used websites on the internet.  It’s also a very good place to make money on, by promoting all sorts of goods and services through posting image based promotions.  However as many marketers have discovered it’s also very easy to get your account removed if you use your accounts too aggressively.

One of the most important skills that any potential Instagram entrepreneur needs to learn is when and how to change your IP address. This brief post hopefully acts as a basic introduction on your Instagram IP address and how you can change it easily.   If you know all this and just want to find a provider for Instagram friendly IP addresses at a great price, may we suggest these guys –

What Is an IP Address and Why is it Important to Instagram?

For the ordinary user, then it’s fairly unimportant on what IP address you connect to Instagram with. Indeed the vast majority of people will probably never even consider the issue. An IP address is a unique network address which every device on the internet needs to operate.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a computer, laptop, tablet or even a smart phone – any device needs this unique address to function online. It may look like a randomly generated number like 192.168.0.1 but it is in fact a digital address that’s individually assigned to your network connection.

There’s a couple of important distinctions though which can be quite confusing. They refer to different sorts of IP addresses which can broadly be split into two main types.

Types of IP Addresses

Public Internet Protocol Addresses

A public IP address is an IP address that is assigned to public networks. With a private IP address, the network should be isolated and not visible to external networks such as the internet.

A public IP is as it’s name suggests publicly visible and can be used to find your home, workplace, school, or more specifically your computer. A public IP address is actually the opposite of a private identification. It’s an address that’s openly shared with everyone on the internet and can be looked up from any network point.

Private Address

A private IPv4 address is a non-routable IP address that can only be used on an internal network. In order to connect to the internet, it must first be translated into a public Internet Protocol (IP) address.

In theory you can use virtually any valid numbers as an internal IP address because it can’t be used to access the internet. In practice though, private IP addresses are typically from the 10.0.0.0/8, 172.16-31.255.254, and 192-168 subnets prefixes that were originally assigned by internet service providers to their end users for internal use on private networks.

Instagram IP Address

You won’t be able to access Instagram using a private IP address directly as it can’t be used online. So when referring to an IP address with regards Instagram you can safely assume it’s a public address.

When you connect to Instagram from any device it’s this IP address that you will use. It’s also the same address which will be logged and checked by Instagram itself. almost all major websites and social media sites, record and analyse the addresses that connect to them. For standard users it’s not really that important but if you’re managing and controlling a valuable account or involved in anything commercial then it can be very important.

It won’t for example be a great idea to manage or update multiple Instagram accounts from the same IP address.

How To Change Your IP Address

This is where the distinction above is important. It’s basically quite simple to change a private IP address whenever you like. However it’s not relevant to anything you do online. Unfortunately changing your public IP is more difficult simply because each address is unique and must be registered centrally. This address is normally assigned automatically when you connect to the internet, so it’s typically controlled by your Internet service provider. It can also be assigned by whichever organisation or business which is allowing your internet access through it’s own connection.

For most of use then it’s not actually possible to have any control directly over the IP address assigned to our connection. There is a method though of hiding your real IP address and using a different one instead. This is vital if you’re managing different accounts or need to get passed the many filters and blocks which are assigned depending on these addresses.

You simply have to use something called a VPN (Virtual Private Network) which is commonly used for privacy and safety online.

Here’s one way to do it this short video – (please read the rest of the article though as this method is not ideal for Instagram account management or promotion).

It’s a perfect method for encrypting your connection or bypassing many media geo-restrictions like accessing the BBC but they use the wrong sort of IP addresses to avoid spam and proxy detection from the social media sites.

Why Change Your IP Address?

This is an important question and there are in fact many different reasons why people do want to change their IP address. The primary one is probably privacy; your real IP address is unique and ultimately traceable back to your computer or device. Most websites now record, track and monitor where each IP address is from, so your visit is never normally anonymous. What’s more your internet activity is also logged at your ISP meaning everything you do online is effectively recorded and monitored with the right access.

On Instagram overusing the same IP address can cause real problems. It can actually lead to what’s called the Instagram IP Ban where all connections from a specific IP address are blocked or refused. This could be from any device, through a web browser or using the Instagram application too. The worse scenario though is when the actual account is banned or deleted too because it’s linked with a certain address. Remember many Instagram accounts are worth a huge amount of money to their owners and are not easily replaced.

Although Instagram publishes its terms and conditions – Terms of Use | Instagram Help Centre they are pretty long and complicated. If you’re using Instagram a lot is fairly common to come into conflict with some of these terms accidentally however careful you are. Some of them refer to obvious legal issues, copyright but there are many which are related to over promotion and marketing on their accounts. It’s these which are often much more difficult to stick to especially if you’re using Instagram to make money with. Basically, if you overly promote your accounts, you will trigger Instagram’s automated spam detection – it will also be very, very wary of accounts being managed on the same IP address.

If you’re running more than one account, then switching your IP address is pretty much essential. Even minor infringements will soon stack up if you’re using the same address on multiple accounts, what’s worse every account could be penalized too.

Pros and Cons of Changing Addresses on Instagram

This is a difficult concept as although generally changing IP addresses safeguards your Instagram accounts if done properly, there are situations where it can endanger your accounts instead.

Pros –

• allows marketing and promotional activities to be spread across accounts.
• keeps your real IP address, identity and location private from Instagram.
• allows management of multiple accounts and separates risk.

Cons –

• takes time and effort to switch IP addresses using proxies or VPNs.
• if you use blacklisted or spammed IP addresses then you could cause more problems that you solve.
• have to ensure IP addresses are in the right ‘region’ for your account history.

If you decide to hide or change your IP addresses when using Instagram (and it is a smart idea) then you should avoid choosing very cheap or free solutions. These are much more likely to use spammed and blacklisted IP addresses which could actually cause damage to your accounts. For example, if you find a free proxy online which connects using Russian IP addresses used by spammers then your account will be flagged the moment you connect. Any benefit from privacy will be wiped away instantly and any action could cause a ban or account removal.

How to Change your Public IP Address Safely on Instagram

In the example above we showed how to change an IP address using a simple VPN program which allowed access to hundreds of IP addresses all over the world. This is a cost-effective method of hiding your identity and location however there are some two major issues with this method. The problem is that the IP addresses used by VPNs are –

• Shared with thousands of people
• IP addresses are classified as commercial

If you’re using Instagram casually on low value, throw away accounts then this isn’t much of an issue. However, this is not ideal on more valuable accounts for a variety of reasons. Firstly, if you’re sharing an IP address with thousands of other users then it’s perfectly possible that many are using it for Instagram too. This may not be a problem if they’re behaving, after all many of us share IP’s when using from work. If you have a few marketers spamming Instagram using those addresses, it can cause issues though including the Instagram IP ban.

The other issue is the fact that VPNs almost always use commercial IP addresses which are highly indicative of proxy/VPN use. Although this won’t cause problems alone, it’s possible your account will be flagged for special attention!

If you want to be safe you need to ensure that the IP address you switch to is both legitimate, classified either as residential or mobile, located in an appropriate country and in good standing.  It sounds like a long list yet it’s quite simple. Most people who are serious about promoting or working on Instagram use proxy servers from a specialist provider who can allocate you a connection to provide all these requirements.

Can Instagram Block IP Addresses?

Yes it can, Instagram blocks thousand of IP addresses every week.  They block for a variety of reasons – one of the major ones is blacklisted IP addresses which are marked as being used recently for fraud or spam.   They’ll also block IP addresses temporarily if an account breaches any of it’s terms of use which you can find here – Instagram Terms of Use.

Conclusion

You can use a VPN if you’re a very casual user of Instagram and just want to manage a few accounts without getting an Instagram IP ban.  However as explained the problem is that these use commercial IP addresses that are shared by lots of other users.  Either of these could set off warning flags by the Instagram spam detector, for occasional use thought they’re fine.

However, if your Instagram accounts have any real value and you’re doing a lot of promotion or marketing on Instagram you’ll need to use different IP addresses.  They should be either residential (from ISPs) or mobile address ranges used by phones and mobile devices.  These are quite hard to acquire so the simplest way is to go to a specialist residential proxy provider who can supply you with the right addresses.

Our recommendation is IP Burgers rotating, residential proxies which are really great value. These can give you access to thousands of residential IP addresses for a pretty low price.  You won’t have exclusive access all the time, but you will avoid the concurrent connections that cause the most problems on this platform.  Your proxy will make the connection using an IP address from the pool and then reassign another address when needed.  If you need encryption check their residential VPN client which works well too.