Did I really leave a trace?

When I realized my original iPhone and IP had been flagged by instagram I decided to buy a new phone and data plan to start a clean Instagram account on.

I thought I would have left no trace, because I had a completely new phone, new service, new IP.

However, I may have made a fatal mistake. I signed into my gmail address on the mail app of my new phone (this email address is associated with my flagged instagram account). I read that IG somehow reads the data from the mail app on your phone and so information can be traced in that way. Can this really be so?

I believe that it is true because as soon as I opened the IG app on my brand new phone and tried to make a new account I immediately got an error “You are using this feature too fast! We have restricted you from making a new account (paraphrasing)”.

I couldn’t even make an IG account on my new phone! The IG app must really be smart to have found the trace I left. Does anyone have any insights on this topic?

Thank you.

hmm i think they can see what Icloud (or app store account) was used to download it and store data that way. I might be very wrong. Have you tried using a different Apple store ID?

I dont think that can happen (instagram reading mail data) but what @rawrsefi says is more probable.

yes, I actually had the foresight to make a totally new apple account to download the app. Not sure how a trace was left still after that.

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Possibly phone was to new. Wait a week

Unfortunately as we find ways to avoid their detection, they find new ways to find us and we have to adapt.
All I can think is you may have connected to or downloaded Instagram using your home wifi rather than mobile data, and hence the same IP address.

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I avoided using WiFi as well. The only trace I left was using the mail app with my email address that is attached to the flagged account. Might experiment and try again with another new phone haha

Seems like a stretch, would love to know the results of your tests.