A friend of mine noticed something weird. She is always logged-in to Instagram on her desktop but strangely enough Instagram allowed her to sign-in automatically on her new laptop. So she didn't have to provide a username and password. So why does Instagram allow her to auto-sign in on the laptop? Is it simply because they see that the desktop and laptop have the same IP address? Don't they notice that it's a different machine? Isn't this a security risk? To clarify, the desktop is connected directly to the modem and the laptop is connected to a Devolo powerline adapter. See link, one powerline adapter is connected to the modem and one to the laptop. But I don't believe Devolo has got anything to do with this problem, but I guess the only way to know is to connect the laptop directly to the modem also. https://www.coolblue.nl/en/product/486407/devolo-dlan-550-duo-no-wifi-500mbps-2-adapters.html
Thanks, but I still don't get it. Isn't this info more related to the smartphone? I mean desktop and laptop should not be linked, why would Instagram look only at the the IP address? I guess I will need to try it myself, I'm going to stay logged in to Instagram on my desktop and then I will see what happens when I try to login on my new laptop. Of course the desktop and laptop are connected to the same modem via LAN.
Well, it keeps getting weirder and weirder. Now I'm also getting weird "sign in" pop ups on Vivaldi, but it's not the sames as the "continue as" pop up that my friend gets as described in the first post, see link 3. So the question is, is this caused by the browser or by Instagram? It seems to be related to the Credential Management API which you can't disable? Clearing cookies from facebook.com and instagram.com doesn't help and disabling "Auto Sign-in" via chrome://settings/passwords, doesn't either. This is weird as hell. https://superuser.com/questions/1533803/disable-chrome-sign-in-as-popup https://golb.hplar.ch/2019/06/credential-management-api.html https://www.reddit.com/r/Instagram/comments/9blui2/cannot_log_out_of_instagram_web/
Let's assume this. The Instagram log-on info is stored somewhere in the cloud. Your IP address source id assumption or something equal like router MAC, etc. is stored with it.
In regard to your original post, had she signed in to Facebook previously on that laptop? Facebook and Instagram accounts are linked somewhat, so if she had logged into Facebook it may have automatically logged her into Instagram. Once you log in to either Facebook or Instagram you stay logged in, until you manually log out.
Yes, you would almost think that it works this way, very confusing. Another option is that the "sign in as" pop-up only works when Vivaldi's password manager is enabled and you have already saved the username and password. So now I will remove Instagram from the password manager and see what happens. It should now not try to log me in automatically. Keep in mind, I'm talking about two different issues, the "sign in as" alert seems to be triggered by the browser, and the "continue as" alert seems to be triggered by Instagram, just to clarify. Good point, she was indeed logged into Facebook on her laptop, and most likely that's why she's getting to see the "continue as" pop up on Instagram. Because even when she was logged out of both Facebook and Instagram on her desktop, she still get could auto sign in on her laptop. I will need to test this, I will logout of Facebook and then she shouldn't be able to auto-login into Instagram.
