FollowBell — Privacy Policy

Last updated 1 November 2026

FollowBell tracks who a public Instagram account follows, and tells you when that changes, in the Android app and on followbell.com. This page says what it holds, and for how long.

No Instagram login

FollowBell never asks for your Instagram password and never signs in to Instagram on your behalf. The Android app asks for no email address, no username and no password: your installation is identified by a random identifier created on your device the first time you open the app. On the website, the only thing you give us is an email address, and only if you subscribe or sign in.

What we hold about you

• that random installation identifier;
• a notification token, so the app can tell you when something changes;
• the version of the app you are running;
• your phone's model, its Android version, its language and region setting (for example "pt-BR"), and which store installed the app — to understand who uses the app and to fix problems on particular phones;
• your subscription status, and the purchase identifier Google gives us for it;
• a record of what the app did — screens opened, lookups requested — kept for 90 days.

We do not store your IP address, your location, your contacts, or anything about the other apps on your device. The region above is the one chosen in your phone's settings, not where you are.

If you use FollowBell on our website

The web version at followbell.com/app keeps, for your account:

• a session cookie, so the site knows it is you from one visit to the next. It is the only cookie we set, it is needed for the site to work, and it expires 90 days after your last visit;
• for each browser, the kind of device (for example « iPhone » or « Windows computer », and whether it is Instagram's or TikTok's own browser), the country the connection came from, the kind of page or site you first arrived from (and the tag on the link, such as « utm_source=chatgpt.com ») and the first screen you opened. Coarse words only: never your IP address, the full identifier your browser sends, or the address of the page you came from;
• if you subscribe or sign in, your email address, whether you have confirmed it, and your alert settings (instant or daily, your time zone, the accounts you muted);
• the identifiers Stripe gives us for your customer record and your subscription, and its status. We never see your card or bank details;
• sign-in codes, stored in a form that cannot be read back, for 8 days;
• whether an email we sent you bounced or was reported as spam, so we stop sending to that address.

Your email address is used to sign you in, to send you the alerts and summaries you chose, to confirm your purchase and your cancellation, and, for four weeks after a subscription ends, at most four emails saying how much the account you watched most has moved, never who. Every one of those has a link to stop them for good. Nothing else: no newsletter, no advertising. A website account with no email address and no purchase is deleted after 30 days without a visit; any other is erased 365 days after its last subscription ended. Deleting your account, from Settings, erases your email address at once and cancels your subscription.

When you visit our website

Our host counts the visits to followbell.com (Cloudflare Web Analytics): which pages are viewed, the site you came from, the country and the kind of device. It sets no cookie and keeps nothing that identifies you or follows you from one site to another.

The site also counts its visits itself, without a cookie: each visit is recognized for one day only, by an anonymous key that changes every day, and nothing that identifies a person is kept.

To know which site or link first brought you, the site keeps in your browser's own storage on followbell.com (not a cookie) the name of that site, the tag on the link and the day, for 30 days. It is read by no one else, and reaches us only if you open the web version, as part of the words listed above.

If you join the waiting list on our website

People without an Android phone can leave an email address on followbell.com to hear when FollowBell comes to iPhone or to the web. For them we keep that address, the platforms they chose, the page they signed up from, the kind of device, the country the connection came from (worked out by our host, not stored as an address), and, if they answered it, who they said they would keep an eye on. We count how often the form is opened, per day, page, kind of device and country, with nothing that identifies anybody.

The address is used to send one email, the day FollowBell is out where you asked, and for nothing else. It is never shared or sold, and it is deleted after that email, or one year after you signed up if that comes first.

If you use the story viewer on our website

The story viewer on followbell.com needs no account. To keep it free and stop abuse, our host checks that a real browser is asking (Cloudflare Turnstile), and we keep, for seven days, a daily code computed from your connection that cannot be turned back into your IP address, together with how many accounts that code opened that day. We count what is used on the page (searches, stories opened, buttons tapped) per day, page, kind of device and country, with nothing that identifies you. The stories, highlights and pictures shown are passed through from Instagram and never stored.

What we hold about the accounts you look up

Only what Instagram publishes to anyone: the account identifier, the username and display name, whether the account is verified or private, and the accounts it follows. We keep a record of the follows and unfollows we observed, because that record is the service.

For an account you watch, we also keep what changes on its public profile — its bio, display name, link, picture and whether it turned private — so the app can tell you what changed.

When you check two accounts against each other, we read their public follows, the accounts that liked their latest public posts, and the accounts tagged in those posts, and keep the answer so you can compare it with the next check.

For an account you watch, we also read which accounts liked its latest public posts, so the app can show who comes back to them. We keep that list of accounts, and nothing else about the likes, for 30 days after we last read it.

Stories and highlights you open are fetched from Instagram when you open them and shown on your phone. We keep the link to them for a short while so the same story is not fetched twice; the pictures and videos themselves are never stored on our servers.

Profile pictures are never stored. We keep a reference that lets the app fetch one from Instagram, and nothing else.

Why we hold it

To provide the service you asked for and to bill it — in the language of the GDPR, the performance of our contract with you, which includes the alert emails. The four weeks of emails after a subscription ends rest on our legitimate interest in offering a former customer the same service again, which you refuse in one click from any of them. The waiting list rests on your consent, which you withdraw by asking us to delete your address. Nothing here is used for advertising, and nothing is sold to anybody.

Who else sees it

We use a small number of processors, and each one sees only what its job requires:

• a provider of public Instagram data, which receives the identifier of the account you asked about;
• a text classification service, located in the United States, which receives public usernames and display names so the app can estimate a likely split between women and men. Profile pictures never leave our own servers — that part runs locally;
• Google, for payments through Google Play and for push notifications;
• Stripe and its Link service, which sell the subscription on our website as reseller: they receive your email address and payment details directly from you, and send your receipts;
• an email delivery service, whose servers are in the European Union, which receives your email address and the content of the emails we send you;
• our hosting provider, whose servers are in the European Union;
• Cloudflare, which hosts our website and the waiting list;
• an error reporting service, which receives technical traces when something breaks.

Transfers outside the European Union are covered by the standard contractual clauses. We will name any of these processors on request.

How long we keep it

• The record of follows and unfollows: for as long as the account is being watched. It is the history you are paying to have.
• Stored copies of a following list: 30 days.
• The answer to a check between two accounts: 30 days.
• Changes seen on a watched account's profile: 90 days.
• Who liked a watched account's latest posts: 30 days after we last read them.
• Raw responses from our data provider: 14 days at most.
• The record of what the app did: 90 days.
• Your email address on the website: until you delete your account, and never more than 365 days after your last subscription ended, so that coming back finds your watches where you left them.
• A website account with no email address and no purchase: 30 days after your last visit.
• An email address on the waiting list: until the one email it was left for, and never more than a year.

Your rights

You may ask for a copy of what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, ask us to erase it, object to our holding it, or ask for it in a portable form. Write to hello@followbell.com and we will answer within one month.

This applies to an Instagram account as well, whether or not you control it: ask and we will remove it, and add its identifier to a list whose only purpose is to stop us ever collecting it again.

In the Android app, erasing your data does not cancel your subscription. We cannot cancel it for you — only you can, from your Google Play account. On the website, deleting your account cancels it.

Children

FollowBell is not intended for children under 13, and we do not knowingly hold data about them.

Changes

If this policy changes, the date at the top of this page changes with it.

Contact

Questions about this policy, or about the data we hold: hello@followbell.com.