At Snap, we make your privacy a priority. We know your trust is earned every time you use Snapchat, or any of our other products and Services.

We don’t stockpile your private messages, and we don’t publicly showcase a timeline of everything you’ve ever posted. Snapchat is designed so that people can only see the things you want to share, for as long as you want to share them. We believe this makes Snapchat feel less like a permanent record and more like a conversation with friends.

Even though our products are constantly evolving, our privacy principles remain unchanged:

When you use Snap’s Services, you share information with us. So, it’s our responsibility to help you understand how that information is used. Our Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, share, and keep information — you can read the highlights here. If you’re curious about how a certain feature uses your data, Privacy by Product breaks things down a bit more. We also explain how features use data right inside of our apps, and throughout our Support Site. Of course, if you still can’t find what you need, you can always ask!

We believe that privacy is essential to empowering self-expression. That’s why you’re in control of who you share things with, how you share them, and how long they can be seen by Snapchatters and, if you so choose, the public. You decide who can see your Story, which friends can see your Bitmoji on the Snap Map, and just how long your Snaps with friends stick around. You can keep things just between you and a friend, or share a moment with the whole world! Learn more.

New features go through an intense privacy review process — we talk about things, we debate them, and we work hard to build products and Services we’re proud of and that we’ll want to use. After all, we use these products and Services every day, both at work and in our personal lives. We handle your information with the same care that we expect for ourselves, our company, our family, and our friends.

You have the right to control your information. That’s why we provide easy ways to access and update your information, adjust how much information you share with us and others, and request that we delete your information — or your account, altogether. You can control most of your privacy settings right in our apps. You can even log in and download your Snapchat information here. If you ever have any specific questions about your data, don’t hesitate to contact us!

Snapchat aims to capture the feeling of hanging out with friends in person — that’s why our systems are designed to delete Snaps and Chats with friends from our servers once they’ve been viewed or have expired (depending on your settings). After a Snap or Chat with a friend is deleted, we’ll mainly be able to see the basic details (we call this “metadata”) — like when it was sent and who it was sent to. Of course, you can always choose to save Snaps to your Memories. Learn more.

We treat your conversations and the content you share with My AI a bit differently — we retain it until you ask us to delete it or delete your account.

It’s important to keep in mind that other Snapchatters can always take a screenshot, or save things using a third-party app. At the end of the day, it’s best to only share the need-to-know stuff with the people you really trust — just like you would in real life!