Instagram users get ability to download their photos, data

While the feature has been available for a while on sibling site Facebook, EU compliance may be a factor

Instagram on Tuesday gave its users the ability to download the photos and data associated with their accounts on that service, something that has been available on Facebook, its parent company, for some time.

The move is in partial compliance with the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, privacy rules, which kick in on May 25.

The tech news site TechCrunch, which first reported that the tool was launched, was told by Instagram that the feature is available to everyone on the service's website at https://www.instagram.com/download/request/, but will take some time to appear for everyone on the mobile app. When it shows up in the app, it will be under privacy settings.

When the download request process begins, a dialog box warns that it could take up to 48 hours before a link to the compressed file that contains an account's contents is sent to the user’s inbox.

Photos and videos are delivered inside separate folders, but the data — contacts, comments, likes, messages and profile details — are in JSON format, a text-based format designed for importing into online services. It's not easy for non-technical types to read.

By contrast, Twitter and Facebook provide most user data in HTML format that's easily read in a web browser.

Instagram is a latecomer to making users data downloadable. Besides Facebook, services such as Twitter, Google, LinkedIn and Snapchat all have had a data-download feature for a while.