How to deactivate or delete your Snapchat account

Like any social network, it can also become a distraction and a risk to your online privacy, which might make you want to deactivate Snapchat.

UPDATE (May 24th, 2019): Today, Snapchat was revealed to be a greater potential privacy threat than we previously thought. Snapchat has an internal app called SnapLion that was created to access private device data in response to law enforcement requests. This includes everything from location data and saved photos (Snaps) to private contact information.

Former employees have reported that the app has been abused by employees to access private data for personal reasons numerous times. Not only has it been distributed to other departments to use for other reasons beyond law enforcement, there have been incidents when employees have used SnapLion to access users’ saved photos or contact information.

If you’ve decided to delete your Snapchat account, here’s how:

1. From Account settings, click on My Account and Security.
2. Click “Account Security,” “Delete My Account,” and “Accounts Portal.”
3. Enter your Snapchat account details to log in.
4. Enter your username and password, then press “Continue.”

After your Snapchat account is deactivated, you still have 30 days to reactivate your Snapchat account. To do so, just log back in to the Snapchat app with your username and password within these 30 days. You have to be patient as it sometimes takes up to 24 hours to reactivate an account along with all of your account information, if you deactivate Snapchat.

1. Open the Snapchat app.
2. Tap your avatar on the top left corner.
3. Tap the gear icon on the top right corner.
4. Scroll down to the “Support” heading and press “I Need Help.”
5. You’ll now be taken to Snapchat’s support page. There’s a search bar at the top of the page. Type in ‘Delete’ and select the first option that appears, it should be “Delete my account.” Press it to delete your account.
6. Tap the “Accounts Portal” link in the text and follow.
7. Now you’re at the Snapchat account deletion page. Simply type in your username and password, and your account will be put into the 30-day recovery period. Just touch log in again and your account should be deleted a month later.

Once your Snapchat account deletion process has started, your Snapchat account will be completely invisible to all of your connections. To delete your Snapchat account permanently, all you have to do is refrain from logging into the app for 30 days after you deactivate your Snapchat account. After this period, your Snapchat account will be mostly gone, but not completely. Snapchat’s privacy guidelines state that they retain some personal data due to legal, security and business needs. This includes info about your purchases and the accepted terms of service.

Be sure you want to continue with deleting your Snapchat account. If you miss the 30-day recovery period, everything associated with your account will be lost forever. Contacts, memories, friends, stories, and any old shared locations or other virtual signposts will vanish, if you delete your account.

Snapchat stores three types of information:

• Information you choose to give (all the info you enter into the app while using it).
• Information obtained when you use Snapchat (information from your device, location, logs, etc.).
• Information obtained from third parties (info from advertisers, others users’ contact lists, information from linked third-party apps).

It can share this info with other users, sister companies, business partners or with concerned parties when required by law. It may also share your data with data brokers (you can use a service like Incogni to opt out of data brokers automatically). It also uses it for internal purposes (e.g., ad-targeting). You can also download your data or revoke permission to use it at the expense of certain functions.

Not only is Snapchat not a private platform, it is not a very secure one. Snapchat does not use end-to-end encryption. You can find secure messaging apps that value your privacy here.

Like Snapchat, most other social media platforms also have their own security and privacy risks. If you want to learn how to stay private on other social media platforms, check out our tips.