Yes, Instagram detects browser language and timezone settings as part of its strategy to identify suspicious activity. This is a fundamental and effective anti-scraping measure. The core idea is not to analyze any single parameter in isolation, but to use cross-validation to identify inconsistencies that deviate from the behavior logic of genuine users.
Why Does Instagram Check These Settings? What Are the Benefits?
This method effectively prevents scraping activities. The anti-scraping system acts like a detective, gathering various clues from different aspects and piecing them together to see if the overall profile makes sense. For example, it would be highly suspicious if a user on a home broadband connection in London, UK, with British English browser settings, displayed a UTC timezone. Genuine users typically display the specific geographical timezone, not UTC.
Here are the specific benefits of detecting these settings:
1.Increases the Cost of Disguising Scrapers: It makes it more difficult and resource-intensive for scrapers to mimic normal users. They now need to ensure their IP address, browser language, and geographical timezone are all consistent and plausible.
2.Verifies IP Address Authenticity: It helps check whether the IP address is genuine and reliable, verifying the authenticity of the location.
3.Enables Multi-Dimensional User Profiling: It constructs a more accurate multi-dimensional user profile by piecing together user information from various angles.
How Does Instagram Use Language and Timezone to Detect Browsers?
1.IP Address and Location:
Instagram can use the IP address to pinpoint location information, including country, city, ISP, and other basic details.
2.Language Settings:
navigator.languages indicates which languages the browser prefers. This property returns an array of language codes, revealing the accepted languages. For example, returning ["zh-CN","zh","en-US","en"] indicates the browser defaults to Simplified Chinese but also supports English.
The code involved is:
BDLanguagesSignalCollector
3.Operating System Timezone Setting:
The new Date().getTimezoneOffset() function returns the difference in minutes between the host system's local time and UTC. Alternatively, the more modern Intl.DateTimeFormat().resolvedOptions().timeZone can be used to obtain the operating system's timezone setting.
The code involved is:
BDTimezoneOffsetSignalCollector
4.Cross-Validation:
After gathering the above information, Instagram performs cross-validation to identify any illogical or suspicious inconsistencies.