How To Send Someone's IG Post To Your Friends Without Getting Caught

It finally happened — that one couple that’s been together since high school got engaged. You’re not super close with either of them, but you and your hometown besties have been rooting for the pair from afar for years and that ring pic on Instagram is sure to set the group chat on fire for weeks. Instead of screenshotting it, you decide to send the photo via Instagram DMs, but as soon as you hit send, a chilling thought enters your mind: Does Instagram notify the other person when you send their Grid post in a DM?

We’ve all wondered whether or not Instagram will sell you out for screenshotting someone’s Story, if it’s possible to screenshot a DM without alerting the other person, or even if there’s a way to view Stories anonymously. But you probably haven’t thought about the platform’s stance on notifying users after their posts have been sent in a DM. There’s no need to panic, though, because sending a post to your nosey friends isn’t as risky as it seems. According to TechZillo, Instagram doesn’t alert its users when their post has been sent as a DM.

While it’s good to know you’ll be in the clear next time you hit send on a DM’d post, it’s not as much of a relief to know you can’t see when your posts are being shared... or by who. Think about it: If you were the one getting engaged, you’d probably want to know if your earnest announcement is circulating around all the cliques you went to high school with like a piece of juicy gossip.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like that’s going to change anytime soon, because as TechZillo points out, allowing people to see who sent their posts could be considered an invasion of the sender’s privacy. You can always make your account private to prevent your photos from making their rounds because users who don’t follow you won’t be able to view your content even if it was sent to them via DM from someone who does.

Keep in mind the original poster may be able to indirectly trace a DM send back to you if the people you sent it to don’t follow them but liked or even commented on the post anyway. They can do so by tapping on the unknown users’ IG handles and seeing who their mutual followers are, and your name will automatically be added to the short list of potential post-senders. So in theory, you could be caught red-handed by the process of elimination.

Business accounts can see how many times a post has been shared via analytics as well, but the stats don’t disclose which accounts have been sharing your content. If you want to play it 100% safe, though, you can always turn to a trusty screenshot — that way you can still give your friends the tea if the original poster has a privateaccount.