FollowerOwl
CheckLogin

[00] ABOUT

We build web apps in London. This is one of our own.

FollowerOwl exists because the alternatives all began by asking for an Instagram password, and none of them needed one. Below is what we believe about handling other people’s data, and — more usefully — the decision behind each belief and the page where you can go and check it.

[01] WHO WE ARE

One founder, twenty years of building software. The company details in full, because a trust claim needs a name attached to it.

We are Overpass, a web app development company registered in England & Wales and working from London. Most of what we do is building software for other people. Some of it is building our own, and FollowerOwl is one of those — which is why it can afford to answer one question properly and refuse the rest, rather than growing features to justify a valuation.

Working on other people’s products is also where the opinions on this page came from. You see what happens when an app collects more than it needs, and how much easier the security conversation becomes when there is simply less to lose. FollowerOwl is that principle taken to its end: for the free check, your data never reaches us at all.

We are an independent project and are not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by Meta. It reads only the data export Instagram provides to you.

[ REGISTERED DETAILS ]

Company
Overpass Limited
Registered in
England & Wales
Company number
05074817 — on the public register
VAT number
GB 833 2334 52
Registered office
124 City Road, London, EC1V 2NX, United Kingdom
Founder
Eric Wroolie
General enquiries
hello@followerowl.com
Anything about your data
privacy@followerowl.com

[02] WHAT WE BELIEVE

Five things, each with the decision that proves it. A belief with no evidence behind it is a slogan, so every one here links to its own proof.

  1. [01]

    A product should not need your password.

    There is no password field anywhere on this site, and we never ask for your Instagram credentials. Signing in is a link sent to your email that works once. Every competitor in this category starts by asking for the keys to your account; we decided the product had to work without them, and then built it that way.

    How the sign-in works

  2. [02]

    Read what the job needs. Nothing else.

    Your export holds your photos, your messages and years of viewing history. We open three files out of it and never touch the rest — not skipped after reading, never read at all. When you save a snapshot we keep three lists of usernames and their dates, and drop every other field at the point of reading.

    Which three files, and why

  3. [03]

    A claim you cannot check is just marketing.

    We say your archive is never uploaded, so we wrote the instructions for catching us out: open your network panel before you drop the file. The browser also enforces it independently of us, through a policy header you can read yourself. Nobody has to take the sentence on trust, which is the only reason it is worth writing.

    Check it yourself

  4. [04]

    Say what you have not built.

    Our trust page lists the gaps as well as the controls: there is no deletion endpoint yet, no bot challenge on profile creation, and no external audit of any kind. A page of unbroken green ticks would be easier to write and worth far less.

    The gaps, in full

  5. [05]

    A number should say what was measured.

    Results are ordered by how long a follow has lasted, because that is the fact people act on. Where an export carries no dates we say so rather than implying an order. And the headline number is rendered in the same colour as every other number on the page — a red one would be telling you how to feel instead of what happened.

    The arithmetic

[03] THE FOUNDER

Eric Wroolie started Overpass in 2004, and still runs it. A linguist, a veteran, and — since fifty — a stand-up comedian.

Eric Wroolie

Founder, Overpass

Grew up in San Diego, joined the US Army at eighteen and was trained as a Mandarin linguist, moved to England, and has been building software for other people — and occasionally for himself — ever since. FollowerOwl is one of the ones he built for himself.

  1. 1991

    US Army, Mandarin and Vietnamese linguist

    Enlisted at eighteen and was trained at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey as a Chinese Mandarin linguist, then Vietnamese, working in military intelligence. Learning a language by its smallest units is reasonable preparation for a product whose whole job is reading three files precisely and refusing to guess at the rest.

  2. 1990s

    Sea World narrator, then teaching

    Narrating shows in front of crowds in Texas, then a spell teaching. Both are the same skill this site keeps leaning on: explaining something accurately to people who did not ask for jargon.

  3. 2000s

    Investment banking, from the inside

    Contracting at BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank and Barclays Capital, with a stint at BBC Worldwide. Twenty years near systems that hold other people's data is where the opinions on this page were formed — most of all how much easier every security conversation becomes when there is simply less to lose.

  4. 2004

    Founded Overpass

    Started the company in March 2004 with a laptop and no clients. Two decades on, its apps have been downloaded tens of millions of times, and the YouTube channel has passed a thousand videos on app development and running a business.

  5. 2023

    Started stand-up comedy at fifty

    No material, no stage presence, and a first gig he describes as terrifying. It is the same instinct as the rest of this site: the only way to find out whether something holds up is to put it in front of people who owe you nothing.

[04] READ THE REST

Everything above is checkable. These are the pages where you would go and do it.

Try it yourself — it’s free

No password, no account, and nothing uploaded.