8 Surprising Reasons Your Instagram Was Deactivated

Ever notice your Instagram account disappear without warning, and you were suddenly no longer allowed to log-in anymore? And you have no idea what happened? This is the post for you then, where you’ll find 8 surprising reasons your Instagram was deactivated.

I’m in this exact situation now where – 2 weeks ago – my Instagram Account was deactivated for “no” reason. At least, it’s not an obvious reason because I’ve reviewed their Community Guidelines and I did not violate any of those. And nobody from Instagram will respond with any reason, so I stand by my claim that there was “NO” reason for my account to be deactivated. I’m still upset about this. But mostly by the fact that they did this to me without warning and are ghosting all my communication attempts.

Because Instagram is ghosting me, I’ve been forced to do my own research. And I’m quite upset at the amount of time I’ve invested researching this on my own because Instagram won’t help me.  So Google has been my best friend the last several days.  Below are 8 of the most surprising reasons your Instagram was deactivated.

#1 Not Using Your Real Identity

This was my primary worry. We all know that I use an alias online due to issues I’ve had in my past with an online stalker.  So my immediate rationale for why my Instagram account was deactivated was because I wasn’t using my real identity.  BUT, this is not true for Instagram.  I reviewed the Instagram terms and found that alias accounts are fine, as long as nobody is being impersonated or harrassed by it.

But this IS a violation on Facebook, FYI.  So if you are like me and using an online alias, make sure to check your Facebook and make alternate plans. I’m planning to use a variation of my real name for Facebook and transfer my alias Page to it, just to make sure I’m protected from this happening to my Facebook account. So please take the same precautions.

So if you are currently following me on Facebook and you notice my Profile Name change, then this is the reason why. I’ll keep the same Profile pic however, so that I leave behind a clue that it is still me.

#2 Not Turning-On Two-Factor Authentication

Did you all know about this?!  It’s optional to turn-on two-factor authentication on Instagram. However, if you do not turn it on, then you are vulnerable to hackers and being hacked IS an easy way to trigger a deactivation, making this one of the most common reasons your Instagram was deactivated.

So please double-check right now that your two-factor authentication is turned-on.

#3 Being Spam-ish

Of all the possible reasons your Instagram was deactivated, then this is the trap that I most likely fell into without realizing it.  Apparently, it’s considered spam to exceed some behavioral limits on Instagram.  And by behavioral limits, I mean actions such as following people, unfollowing people, liking posts, leaving comments, etc.  But Instagram doesn’t actually notify you if you are approaching these limits, so you don’t have the opportunity to correct yourself. Some of the limits that I was able to find posted online are:

a maximum number of likes per hour: 60

a maximum number of comments per hour: 60

a maximum number of follows per hour: 60

a maximum number of messages per hour: 60

If these limits are true, it’s very possible that I did more than 60 likes in an hour.  Honestly, I could do that in less than 2 minutes.  It’s so easy when you’re scrolling and see so many pretty pictures.  So this is what I think trapped me, if anything.

But the right thing to do in this situation if Instagram wanted me to change some behavior, would be to simply send me a notice of some sort (a pop-up, a notification, an email, etc) to inform me of the behavior I should change. Or block me from that action until the timeout is over.  I would’ve gladly changed this behavior if I was aware of it. But it’s not right to straightaway deactivate someone’s account without warning instead.

#4 User Complaints

If enough users reported against me, or a single user reported against me multiple times, then Instagram can deactivate the account without warning.  But since Instagram won’t notify you of any reports made against you, then you don’t have the opportunity to change your behavior. And also, someone might’ve just been acting out a grudge too. If that’s the case, then people can be victimized by losing their accounts when they cross someone who is very disgruntled.

I don’t believe that I’ve angered anyone enough to motivate them to do this to me, but I can’t rule it out.

#5 Logging in from Multiple Devices and IP Addresses

Most of us have multiple devices and therefore multiple IP addresses. If Instagram notices too many log-ins from multiple devices or multiple IP addresses within an unspecified timeframe, then they could interpret that as suspicious activity and block you. Awareness of this may help you to prevent it.

#6 Third-Party Apps and Buying Followers

I haven’t used any third-party apps for Instagram so I’m not very familiar with them. But apparently, there are apps out there that monitors your follower activity, tracks new followers and unfollowers, and will let you buy a ton of followers for your account.  But all of these apps are no-nos so I wouldn’t recommend trying any of them. These apps could be one of the reasons your Instagram was deactivated.

#7 Violating Community Guidelines

This is the catch-all to explain the reasons your Instagram was deactivated. But some of the guidelines are written very subjectively so it can be difficult to determine actual violations. I definitely recommend proactively reading through the published Instagram Community Guidelines to ensure that you are not unintentionally violating any of them. The link to access the Community Guidelines directly is here: Instagram Community Guidelines.

So I’ve been obsessed with getting my Instagram account back ever since this happened to me 2 weeks ago.  I’m still devastated by this since I invested a lot of time and energy into building my Instagram account.  The idea of starting over just kills me. You can see that I’ve been active on it, up until the day they took it away from me and deleted all my posts and won’t let me log-in anymore…

#8 Use of Copyrighted Material

This one should be the easiest one to avoid. Only use original content. Always. And if you do this, then this won’t be a problem for you. If you are promoting products however, try to take your own photos of the product. If you MUST use an image provided to you by the sponsor, make sure that communication and image transaction happens in the Instagram DMs.

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I’m still reaching out to Instagram everyday, and researching different ways to contact them effectively.  If you want a summary of what I’ve been trying, you can check-out my previous post here: 5 Ways to Restore Your Deactivated Instagram Account. I hope this never happens to you, it’s terrible!