If you use Instagram, you know that many people follow you then, almost instantly, unfollow you. It seems that the principle here is to get you to follow them, then they unfollow you a bit later on, leaving you stranded. We’ve noticed lately that many start-up businesses do the same thing, it’s not just individual users. Here’s how we get rid of those tricksters once and for all.

1. Head over to insta.friendorfollow.com   . If you have Instagram open on your computer, all you have to do is press the login button. Otherwise you have to enter your Instagram information. It’s safe, don’t worry about your security with Friend or Follow.

2. Once you are officially inside the site, you’ll see three tabs across the top of the page. One tab shows Instagram users who you follow but do not follow  you back. The next tab shows you who follows you but you don’t follow them back. The third tab show users who follow you and you follow back.

3. The most recent additions are at the top. Assuming that you’ve been using Instagram for a while, you’ve got a fair number of accounts that you follow. Your oldest follows are at the bottom. You can’t organize any of these lists of users any other way.

4. If someone has recently followed you and has tricked you into following them, they will be on the first tab, right up in the top left corner. If you hover your mouse over their icon, their mini-profile will appear. You can either unfollow them from there or you can click on their username and check out their posts. Then you can unfollow them from that page if their photo mix doesn’t meet with your approval.

We’ve found that Instagram users play this game far more than people on Twitter. On Twitter, your followers generally stick around forever. If they don’t, there is a separate friendorfollow site for Twitter. It works the same way so there’s no need for a separate post, at least not anytime soon.

We’re winding down for the holidays but we’ll be checking for comments every day. There may be a few posts before we take a break, we’re not sure. Regardless, we love to hear from our readers. Comments and questions are welcome but  Likes on our Facebook page get immediate attention.  Here’s the link: Computers Made Simple on Facebook 

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