What your store keeps, and deleting it
What your store keeps
When you connect Instagram, your store keeps only what the feed needs:
- The connection: a sign-in key from Instagram that lets your store read your profile and posts. It is stored encrypted and is never shown, not even to you.
- Your profile: your username, the account type (Business or Creator), your profile picture and your number of posts.
- Your latest posts: up to 50, each with its caption, date, link and type (photo, video or carousel), and a copy of its picture. For a video, the copy is its cover picture; for a carousel, its first picture.
- Your choices: which posts are shown or pinned, and the products you tagged.
Your store can't post to Instagram or change anything on your account with this connection. It only reads your profile and posts.
Why your store copies the pictures
Instagram's own picture links stop working after a while, which is the most common reason feeds on other websites break. Your store keeps its own copy of each picture, so the feed keeps loading. Shoppers' browsers load the pictures from your store, not from Instagram.
Deleting it
From your store: choose Disconnect on Marketing → Instagram Feed and confirm. Your store deletes the connection, the posts, its copies of the pictures and the product tags straight away.
From Instagram: you can also remove your store's access in the Instagram app, under Settings and privacy → Apps and websites (on some versions, Website permissions → Apps and websites). Instagram then tells your store, and your store deletes the same data as Disconnect.
If you ask Instagram to delete your data, Instagram tells your store and gives you a confirmation code. You can check the request's status with that code.
Switching the Instagram Feed module off hides the feed and stops syncing, but keeps the connection and your choices, so switching it on again picks up where you left off. To delete the data, choose Disconnect.