November 01, 2015
November 01, 2015

Protecting your Privacy

There’s been some confusion about the updated Privacy Policy and Terms of Service we rolled out last week. We never want to create any misunderstanding over our commitment to protecting your privacy.
There’s been some confusion about the updated Privacy Policy and Terms of Service we rolled out last week. We never want to create any misunderstanding over our commitment to protecting your privacy.
First off, we want to be crystal clear: The Snaps and Chats you send your friends remain as private today as they were before the update. Our Privacy Policy continues to say—as it did before—that those messages “are automatically deleted from our servers once we detect that they have been viewed or have expired.” Of course, a recipient can always screenshot or save your Snaps or Chats. But the important point is that Snapchat is not—and never has been—stockpiling your private Snaps or Chats. And because we continue to delete them from our servers as soon as they’re read, we could not—and do not—share them with advertisers or business partners.
It’s true that our Terms of Service grant us a broad license to use the content you create—a license that’s common to services like ours. We need that license when it comes to, for example, Snaps submitted to Live Stories, where we have to be able to show those Stories around the world—and even replay them or syndicate them (something we’ve said we could do in previous versions of our Terms and Privacy Policy). But we tried to be clear that the Privacy Policy and your own privacy settings within the app could restrict the scope of that license so that your personal communications continue to remain truly personal.
You may wonder why we revised the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. Here are a few of the key reasons:
  • The main thing we did was to rewrite the Terms and Privacy Policy so that they’d read the way people actually talk. We always try to be upfront and clear with our community.
  • We added language to the Terms of Service regarding in-app purchases. We needed to do that now that we’re selling Replays—and have some other cool products and services we’re looking forward to bringing to you soon.
  • To make it a little easier for friends to find you on Snapchat, we’ve clarified what info—like your name—will be visible to other Snapchatters and how you can modify that info.
Both the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy are important documents, so we encourage all Snapchatters to read them. For more info, please check out Snapchat Support, including articles like When are Snaps and Chats deleted? and our Community Guidelines.
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