Instagram introduced a new feature that highlights Stories by location or hashtag — meaning people who don’t follow you can stumble upon your story updates.

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As much as Instagram Stories encourages us to overshare pretty much every detail of our lives, you might want to consider taking more control of who can actually see your life in snippets. A few months ago, Instagram introduced a new feature that highlights Stories by location or hashtag meaning people who dont follow you can stumble upon your story updates. 
If youve enabled Instagram to know your location, at the top of the Explore page, you might notice story updates such as New York that include multiple public Stories from accounts you dont follow. Similarly to location, popular hashtags like #coffee or #shopping will appear in Explore tab.
While this feature is good for potentially discovering new areas in a city or interesting profiles to follow, it also gives your profile more exposure, whether you want it or not. So, if your account is public, but you dont fancy becoming Instagram famous, heres how to hide your Stories from strangers on the Explore page: 
Making your account private 
First off, the easiest way to make sure no lurkers watch your story or find your profile is to switch your account to private, meaning youll have to accept follow requests.
To do this, select your profile icon on the bottom-right of the page, then select the burger menu at the top-right hand side. From here, tap Settings > Privacy > Account privacy under the Connections category. Finally, adjust the Private account toggle to green. 
But, I dont want a private Instagram account
Alternatively, Instagram made it possible for you to opt out on a per-photo basis if your profile appears on the popular location or hashtag story.
If your story has been featured in a popular, public shared story, youll see a note on your story saying its been featured. To remove your story, go into the view list for your story by swiping up. Then, select the X button at the top-right hand side of the page and tap Hide to no longer be included in the story.
Credit: LifeHacker
If you want to take even more control of who sees your content, you can individually select accounts to hide your Stories from. We wrote a whole guide on it here.