Instapro APK’s permission requests are far higher than the official application’s, coupled with higher privacy and security risks. According to Kaspersky Lab’s research in 2024, Instapro APK requests 87 system permissions by default (the official Instagram app needs only 32), 23% of which are high-risk permissions (e.g., READ_SMS and WRITE_SETTINGS). For instance, after Rajesh, an Indian user, installed the bank verification code, it was hijacked due to granting the “Read Text Messages” permission, resulting in an account loss of 2,200 US dollars. By denying this permission, the data leakage risk could be reduced from 14% to 3.2%.
The storage, camera and location access are the permissions that core functions rely on. The storage permissions (READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE and WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE) are used to save the downloaded media files, triggering file operations on average 120 times per day (45 times in the official app). This raised the fragmentation rate of the device storage by 28% (e.g., Redmi Note 13’s read and write speed decreased from 450 MB/s to 325 MB/s). Brazilian content creator Ana accidentally deleted 370 original videos (worth 1,500 US dollars) due to a storage permission vulnerability.
The REQUEST_INSTALL_PACKAGES high-risk permission technical risk needs to be guarded against. Instapro APK’s REQUEST_INSTALL_PACKAGES permission allows other applications to be silently installed. 2024 testing found that 31% of unofficial variants abused this permission to inject ad SDKS (e.g., Tapcore). The daily pop-up window is triggered 14 times on average (with 120 MB data consumption per month). For instance, Mexican user Juan’s device was forced to download three gambling apps, and monthly traffic excess expenditure totaled $34, with the CPU utilization rate standing at 22% for a prolonged time (the security threshold of 15%).
The risk of privacy permission abuse is high. The ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION permission (location permission) is used in Instapro APK for the “People Nearby” functionality. However, a research carried out by the University of Oxford in 2024 found that 38% of the surveyed APKs leaked location information to third-party servers (e.g., 45.134.26.9). The daily average frequency of users’ location leakage is up to 17 times. After the real-time location of German user Muller was obtained by hackers, his home was burgled and he lost 23,000 US dollars’ worth of property.
The minimization of permissions can mitigate risks. The permissions were examined using the Exodus Privacy tool (in 2 minutes). After disabling non-essential permissions (e.g., MODIFY_AUDIO_SETTINGS), the maximum memory consumption dropped from 412 MB to 295 MB (-28.4%), and the app crash rate fell from 19% to 6%. For instance, when Indonesian user Budi disabled 32 non-core permissions, the battery life was recovered from 5.8 hours to 7.1 hours (+22.4%).
The legal and compliance considerations have to be weighed. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the European Union imposes a fine of up to 4% of the annual revenue of an enterprise for gathering excessive permissions. Spanish company Viajes360 was fined 550,000 euros (4.5% of yearly revenue) for the utilization of Instapro APK by the company’s employees for scraping user location data. Also, Meta’s risk control system maintains an annual average ban rate of 15.3% for non-official APK accounts (0.7% for official apps), with an unblock success rate of only 29%.
In summary, the permission requests (87 items) and risks (data leakage possibility of 14%) of Instapro APK are far more than those of the official apps. If it is necessary to use it, it is recommended to use VirusTotal scanning (with a detection rate of 99.6%) and permission minimization configuration (disabling 60% of non-essential permissions) to reduce the virus infection probability to 3.7%. For business users, the compliance cost (monthly subscription of $25 per account) of the Instagram Business API (with 45 permission requests and a leakage probability of 0.03%) is only 1/4 of the disposal cost of the risk.