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Instagram Bio & Email Extractor

An Apify actor that discovers Instagram profiles from multiple sources and extracts contact info — especially emails — from their bios.

What it does

• Discovers Instagram profiles from any combination of: direct usernames/URLs, hashtags, locations, search queries, an upstream Apify dataset, or a CSV / Google Sheets URL.
• Fetches each profile via Instagram's web_profile_info JSON endpoint (the cheapest and most stable public path).
• Extracts username, full name, bio, follower/following/post counts, external URL, business category, verification status, and is_private.
• Parses the bio (and optionally the link-in-bio page) for emails, phone numbers (E.164), and social handles for TikTok, YouTube, X, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Telegram, Threads, Facebook, and Pinterest.
• Emits one row per profile into the default Apify dataset.

What it does NOT do

• Does not scrape private profiles' posts, stories, DMs, or follower lists.
• Does not log in by default. A session cookie is opt-in and required for auth-only modes (see below).
• Does not bypass Instagram's auth walls for protected content.

Discovery modes

Discovery modes can be combined freely — results are merged and deduplicated by username (first-seen wins for discoveredVia / sourceRef).

Output

One row per profile. Always emitted with the full shape — empty arrays or nulls for missing fields.

{
"username":"natgeo",
"fullName":"National Geographic",
"profileUrl":"https://www.instagram.com/natgeo/",
"biography":"Experience the world...",
"externalUrl":"https://natgeo.com",
"isVerified":true,
"isPrivate":false,
"isBusinessAccount":true,
"businessCategory":"Media",
"followersCount":281000000,
"followingCount":132,
"postsCount":28500,
"profilePicUrl":"https://...",
"emails":["press@natgeo.com"],
"phones":["+12025550100"],
"socialHandles":{
"tiktok":["natgeo"],"youtube":["natgeo"],"x":[],
"linkedin":[],"whatsapp":[],"telegram":[],
"threads":[],"facebook":[],"pinterest":[]
},
"scrapedAt":"2026-05-23T12:34:56.000Z",
"discoveredVia":"hashtag",
"sourceRef":"veganbakeryberlin",
"contactSource":"profile_page",
"status":"ok"
}

status is one of ok | private | not_found | deactivated | rate_limited | error.

Email extraction

The actor handles common bio obfuscations before matching:

• name [at] domain [dot] com → name@domain.com
• name (at) domain (dot) com → name@domain.com
• name AT domain DOT com → name@domain.com
• name@@domain → name@domain

Matched emails are then filtered to drop:

• Image / asset extensions (.png, .jpg, .webp, …)
• Known tracking domains (sentry.io, wixpress.com, example.com, …)
• noreply@ / no-reply@ / donotreply@
• Purely numeric local-parts longer than 8 characters (tracking IDs)

Phone numbers are parsed via libphonenumber-js and output in E.164.

External URL scanning

When scrapeExternalUrl: true, the actor follows the profile's external_url and scans the response body for additional contacts. This is SSRF-guarded:

• Rejects private / loopback / link-local IPs (post-DNS).
• Rejects non-http(s) schemes.
• Caps response size at 2 MB.
• 10s total timeout.
• At most 3 redirects, re-validated per hop.

Anti-detection

• Residential proxy required for production scale. Datacenter IPs get challenged within a few requests.
• Session pool with rotation — sessions are retired after rate-limit / login-wall responses.
• Randomised delays between profiles (minDelayMs / maxDelayMs, default 1500–4500 ms).
• Login wall detection by both URL (/accounts/login/) and body markers (LoginAndSignupPage, etc.).
• Cheerio-based crawler by default — no headless browser, much cheaper.

Local development

npminstall
# place a test input
mkdir-p storage/key_value_stores/default
echo'{"usernames":["natgeo"],"maxProfiles":1}'> storage/key_value_stores/default/INPUT.json
# run
npm start
# test
npmtest

Local runs use no proxy by default and will hit IG's login wall after a few requests. That's expected — local is for logic, scale-test on the Apify platform with a residential proxy.

Legal & ethical

• This actor scrapes only public profiles. Private profiles return only basic metadata (no bio).
• Profile pictures are stored as URLs only — no binaries.
• You are responsible for compliance with GDPR, CCPA, CAN-SPAM, and local data-protection laws when using extracted contact info for outreach.
• Do not use this actor for harassment, stalking, or targeted abuse.