About StoryLurk
StoryLurk is a small, independent website that does one thing: it lets you view and save content from public Instagram accounts without signing in. This page explains how it works, what happens to your data and the rules we follow.
What StoryLurk does
When you enter a username, StoryLurk looks up that account's public profile, current stories, recent posts, reels and highlights, and shows them on the page. Photos and videos load through StoryLurk, so Instagram never sees your device. You can download each one in full quality, on a phone, tablet or computer.
There's no app to install, no browser add-on and no account to create. Our Instagram story viewer is the main tool, and there are separate pages for the Instagram post viewer, highlight viewer, anonymous viewer and profile viewer.
We built StoryLurk because looking at public content shouldn't require handing over an account. People use it to keep up with creators and brands, check a business before buying from it, or save something useful before a story disappears.
StoryLurk only works with public accounts. We don't show private profiles, close-friends stories or paid subscriber content, and we never try to get around Instagram's login or privacy settings. If an account is private, StoryLurk tells you so and stops there.
There are a few other things StoryLurk can't do. It doesn't show direct messages, comments or follower lists, and it only loads an account's most recent posts and reels. StoryLurk is free to use. We may show ads in the future to help cover running costs.
Privacy and data
We built StoryLurk to know as little about you as possible.
- We never ask for your Instagram username or password, and we don't offer any private or paid content. You never log in to Instagram through StoryLurk.
- We don't record your search history, and we never need your real name or social media accounts. The usernames you look up aren't saved or linked to you. There's no sign-up, so there's no name, email address, phone number or social login to give us.
- Public content is only kept for a short time. To keep pages fast, we keep a temporary copy of public content: about 30 minutes for stories and up to 24 hours for profile details. After that it's deleted automatically.
- Bot protection uses as little data as possible. To stop bots from overloading the site, we count how often each visitor searches. We use a scrambled version of the IP address for this, and it's deleted within a day.
- Our daily totals are just numbers. We count how many lookups we make each day to keep costs under control. These totals don't include usernames or IP addresses.
Our Privacy Policy has the full details, including the companies that help us run the site.
Respect for creators
Everything StoryLurk shows was posted publicly by its owner, and it still belongs to them. We don't keep a permanent archive or republish anything. Downloads are for personal use, like saving a recipe or watching something again later.
Please don't re-post other people's photos or videos without permission, pass off their work as your own, or use StoryLurk to harass or track anyone. Our Terms of Service don't allow it. If you're not sure whether you can reuse something, ask the person who posted it first.
If you own a public account and don't want it to be viewable on StoryLurk, email support@storylurk.com. Include your username and a way to confirm the account is yours, and we'll block it quickly. We only ask for what we need to confirm that you own it. You can use the same address for any other question.
StoryLurk is an independent project. It isn't affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Instagram or Meta Platforms, Inc.