There’re just a lot of reasons someone would delete social media accounts or posts all of a sudden — maybe it’s just an impulse act, or maybe it’s to get rid of some memories and start afresh. Or in a more common case, as shared by an Insta user who wants to salvage percious moments during which they once felt embarrassed,

But we as friends are often curious about what was in the account. Or in a more common case shared by other users, we as the account owner want to recover on our feed the precious moments we deleted from our phones years ago simply out of embarrassment¹. If you’re having the same thought, don’t worry. Whether the account is deleted or disabled, it’s still possible to recover some data with the proper methods.

How to find deleted Instagram account or posts

Here’s some proven tips that’ll help you find someone’s deleted Instagram account or posts. You may get more results searching by a username. If you don’t have the username, try searching with other information such as the name, phone number or even just a picture.

1. Run a reverse username search

The easiest and most efficient way to search someone’s online footprint is to reverse search the IG username. It’ll only take a few seconds for the reverse search tool to generate a report containing all the available photos and social media accounts associated with that person (you may even see when the account became inactive).

We’ve hand picked some popular tools for you below. You can try them to further your investigation.

1. Search the username with BeenVerified

BeenVerified is a reverse search tool specializing in social media search. It sources data from 55+ social networks and cross-references them with millions of public records. By searching with the Instagram username, you’ll see a report containing all the available social media accounts and photos associated with that person.

1. Go to the BeenVerified search page.
2. Enter the Instagram username and click Search.
   (If you don’t remember the username, try searching with the person’s real name)
   
3. Once it locates a match, it’ll generate a report containing all the available photos and social media accounts linked to the username. You may also see when the account was created and when it became inactive.
   

2. Track digital footprint with Spokeo

Spokeo is a powerful alternative to BeenVerified. It’s arguably one of the best social media search tool you can find on the Internet. By reversing an Instagram username, you may find that person’s digital footprint on 120+ social networks including dating sites.

1. Go to Spokeo.
2. Enter the Instagram username and click Search Now.
   
3. It may take a minute for Spokeo to search the database. Once it locates a match, you can unlock the report and view photos and available accounts on 120+ social networks.
   

2. Search the photo on Social Catfish

Even when an Instagram account is deleted, the same username is still unavailable. So it makes sense if you can’t find anything with a username. But don’t worry, you can try searching a photo or the Instagram profile image. Many people use the same picture for their online profiles, so you can take advantage of this and run a reverse image search.

And Social Catfish offers a powerful photo search, allowing you to search dozens of social networks plus dating sites (places beyond Google’s reach). Unlike other search tools, it uses AI technology to recognize and cross-reference images. You can start by searching the Instagram profile image, and the result may include old photos and accounts on other social media sites.

1. Go to Social Catfish.
2. Upload an image and click Search.
   
3. It might take a few minutes for Social Catfish to search the database. Once done, unlock the profile and get the information you need.
   

3. Search the profile URL in Wayback Machine

Life hackers may be familiar with the Wayback Machine: it’s a digital database that allows you to take screenshots of a webpage, also a great source to find information on pages which are no longer available. All you need is an Instagram profile URL and you’re good to go.

1. Go to Wayback Machine.
2. Enter the profile URL of the deleted Instagram account. Press Enter.
   
3. Select a year. Click the colored dots in the calendar to see the cached page. (If you see an Instagram login page, just try the earlier dates.)
   
4. Once you see the cached page, you can upload the image on Social Catfish to search for more information.
   

This trick is more likely to work when the account belongs to a celebrity or influencer, as it requires manual actions to archive a page. There are cases where individual users try the same method to retrieve their own deleted Instagram photos with the original url and end up with zero records². So lower your expectations if the account you’re searching for doesn’t have that many followers.

4. Search the username in Google

Google can help you on lots of things, including finding someone’s online presence. This might not get you as many details as the methods above, but it’s definitely worth a shot.

When you’re searching the username on Google, knowing some common tricks would surely give you a leg up. For instance, you can add site:tinder.com to your search string to only show results from Tinder. And if the username consists of symbols like underscores, simply replace them with space.

Deleted Instagram Photo Viewers: Are they legit?

When searching for deleted Instagram photos, you may come across some websites advertising recovery tools like deleted Instagram photo viewers or private Instagram viewers.

But you’ll always end up finding that these tools won’t do anything other than wasting your time — While Instagram has a “Recently Deleted” folder where you can see your deleted posts and stories, other users have no access to your deleted data. Plus according to our research, currently there aren’t any third party database storing every Instagram user’s data.

Wrap up

While we may delete Instagram posts from time to time, it takes a lot more courage for someone to delete their account. If you’re just curious, you can try free tools like Google, Tinyeye or Wayback Machine to look for clues.

However, there are times when we want to get to the bottom of it. Like some users shared that they begin to suspect something, when their significant others deleted their Instagram accounts without telling their partners³. If you’re facing something similar, you can use a people search tools to learn more about the person.

FAQ

1. PuzzledAd8975. (2023, November 2). Is it possible to recover deleted post from years ago? [Online forum post]. Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/Instagram/comments/17lqaaa/is_it_possible_to_recover_deleted_post_from_years/ ↩︎
2. alegnaca. (2016, September 17). How to retrieve deleted instagram photos, with the original url that was posted [Online forum post]. Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/Instagram/comments/536s9r/how_to_retrieve_deleted_instagram_photos_with_the/ ↩︎
3. mum-n-more. (2021, August 17). Husband deleted Instagram account without saying anything? [Online forum post]. Whattoexpect. https://community.whattoexpect.com/forums/relationships/topic/husband-deleted-instagram-account-without-saying-anything-120050762.html ↩︎