This section explains how we use the information we collect. Among other things, we use the information we collect to provide you with personalized products and Services that we work hard to build and improve. Below, we walk through each purpose for which we use information in detail. If you’d like to see a mapping of the data we collect with the purposes for which we collect it, we have a table here.
We use the information we collect in order to operate, deliver, and maintain our Services. For example, by delivering a Snap you want to send to a friend or, if you share your location on Snap Map, to show you suggestions like places you might like in your neighborhood, content others have posted to the Map, or your friends if they’re sharing their location with you. We also use some of your information to help keep our products up to date, for example to make sure that our Services work with the latest operating systems and devices.
We offer personalized Services to Snapchatters. One of the ways we do this is by showing you content that is relevant to you or we think you may enjoy based on the information you share with us. To do so, we use information about you across different areas of the Services in order to add context to your Snapchat experience. For example, we automatically tag content with labels based on the content, your location, or the time of day. So if there's a dog in the photo, it may be searchable in Memories by the term “dog,” show up on the Map at the location where you created the Memory, and inform us that you’re into dogs so we can surface you fun dog videos and dog food ads in other parts of our Services, such as Spotlight.
Personalization can also help with suggesting friends or recommending a new friend to send a Snap to based on who you Snap with the most. We may show recommended places on the Snap Map, generate stickers, or even generate Snaps and other content using AI, infer your interests based on your content or activity, or customize the content we show you, including ads. For example, if you watch barista content on Spotlight, talk to My AI about your favorite espresso machine, or save a lot of coffee-related Snaps in your Memories, we may highlight coffee shops on the Snap Map when you visit a new city or show you content about coffee that you may find interesting or relevant. Or, if you interact with a lot of music venues we may use that to show you ads for upcoming shows in town. Personalization also includes tailoring your experience based on who you interact with most and what your friends are doing, including showing you content your friends create, like, or enjoy on Spotlight or Place recommendations that are popular with your friends.
Our goal is to continuously provide you with more relevant and interesting content.
For example, if you watch a lot of sports content, but skip content with hair and makeup tips, our recommendation algorithms will prioritize sports, but not those makeup tips. You can learn more about how we understand Snapchatter preferences and rank and moderate content here.
We believe it is critical to also balance the benefits of personalization with our Snapchatters’ expectations of privacy. For example, we may automatically tag the Snaps you save to Memories based on the content within it (e.g., the Snap contained a dog), and then use that tag to personalize your experience, make recommendations, or show you ads (such as showing you Spotlight Snaps containing dogs). We do not use the private content and communications you send to your friends to personalize your experience, make recommendations, or show you ads.
Another way we provide a personalized Service is through the ads we show. We use your interests and preferences from the information we’ve collected to personalize, target, and measure ads. We think ads are best when they’re relevant. That’s why we try to select the right ads and show them to you at the right time. For example, if you’ve interacted with ads for video games, we will infer that you like video games, and show you similar ads, but those won’t be the only ads you see. Similar to our content strategy, we try to ensure you receive a variety of ads. We also use your information to avoid showing you ads you probably won’t be interested in. For example, if a ticketing site tells us you’ve previously bought tickets for a movie — we can stop showing you ads for it. You can learn about the different types of advertising and your choices about which ads you receive here.
You can learn more about how we collect, use, and share your information for advertising purposes here.
A note about information collected by cookies and other technologies: we may use these technologies to collect information when you interact with Services we offer through one of our partners. For example, we may use information collected on an advertiser’s website to show you more relevant ads. Most web browsers are set to accept cookies by default. If you prefer, you can usually remove or reject browser cookies through the settings on your browser or device. Keep in mind, though, that removing or rejecting cookies could affect the availability and functionality of our Services. To learn more about how we and our partners use cookies on our Services and your choices, please check out our Cookie Policy.
Our teams are constantly coming up with new ideas for features and ways to improve our Services. In order to do this, we also develop and improve the algorithms and machine learning models (an expression of an algorithm that combs through significant amounts of data to find patterns or make predictions) that make our features and Services work, including through generative AI features (artificial intelligence capable of generating text, images, or other media, using generative models. Generative AI models learn the patterns and structure of their input training data and then generate new data that has similar characteristics). We use algorithms and machine learning models for personalization, advertising, safety and security, fairness and inclusivity, augmented reality, and to prevent abuse or other Terms of Service violations. For example, our algorithms and machine learning models take into account the conversations Snapchatters are having with My AI to improve the responses from My AI.
Your information can help us decide what kind of improvements we should make, but we are always focused on privacy — and we don’t want to use more of your personal information than necessary to develop our features and models.
In order to understand what to build or how to improve our Services, we need to understand trends and demand for our features. For example, we monitor metadata and trends about Group Chat use to help decide whether we should change parts of the feature, like the maximum size of a Group. Studying data from Snapchatters can help us see trends in the ways that people use the Services. This helps inspire us to improve Snapchat on a larger scale. We perform analytics in order to identify, monitor, and analyze trends and usage. Based on this information, we will, among other things, create information about our users to help us understand demand.
We conduct research to better understand general consumer interests, trends, and how our Services are used by you and others in our community. This information, along with analytics (as we described above), helps us understand more about our community and about how our Services fit into the lives of those in our community. We also engage in research and development to develop new techniques and technologies (e.g., new machine learning models or hardware, such as Spectacles). The results of our research are sometimes used in features on Snapchat, and we sometimes publish papers about things like overall behaviors and consumer trends (which will only have aggregated data across our user base, and not contain any private information about you specifically).
We use your information to enhance the safety and security of our Services, verify Snapchatter identity, and prevent fraud or other unauthorized or illegal activity. For example, we provide two-factor authentication to help protect your account and can send you email or text messages if we notice any suspicious activity. We also scan URLs sent on Snapchat to see if that webpage is potentially harmful, and can give you a warning about it.
Sometimes we’ll get in touch with you to promote new or existing features. This includes sending Snapchatters communications through Snapchat, email, SMS, or other messaging platforms, where permitted. For example, we may use the Snapchat app, email, SMS, or other messaging platforms to share information about our Services and promotional offers that we think may interest you.
Other times, we need to communicate with you to provide information, alerts, or to send messages our users ask us to deliver at their request. This may include sending communications through Snapchat, email, SMS, or other messaging platforms, where permitted, to deliver account status updates, security alerts, and Chat or friending reminders; it may also include fulfilling our user’s request to send invites or Snapchat content to non-Snapchatters.
When you ask for help, we want to get you support as quickly as possible. In order to provide you, the Snapchatter community, and our business partners with the help needed to resolve issues with our Services, we often need to use the information we have collected to respond.
We use the data we collect to enforce our Terms and the law. This includes enforcing, investigating, and reporting conduct that violates our Terms, policies, or the law, responding to requests from law enforcement, and complying with legal requirements. For example, when unlawful content is posted on our Services, we may need to enforce our Terms and other policies. In some cases, we may also use or share your information to cooperate with law enforcement requests, escalate safety issues to law enforcement, industry partners, or others, or comply with our legal obligations. Check out our Transparency Report to learn more.
Additionally, there may be instances when you interact with our Services that we will ask for your permission to use your information in a new, different, or otherwise specific way.
