FollowBell — Privacy Policy

Last updated 14 September 2026

FollowBell tracks who a public Instagram account follows, and tells you when that changes. This page says what it holds, and for how long.

No account, no login

FollowBell never asks for your Instagram password and never signs in to Instagram on your behalf. There is no email address, no username and no password anywhere in this service. Your installation is identified by a random identifier created on your device the first time you open the app.

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 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.

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.

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. 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;
• our hosting provider, whose servers are in the European Union;
• 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.
• Raw responses from our data provider: 14 days.
• The record of what the app did: 90 days.

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 [email protected] 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.

Erasing your data does not cancel your subscription. We cannot cancel it for you — only you can, from your Google Play account.

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: [email protected].