Information Snap Collects

• Account registration info.
  When you sign up for Snapchat, we collect certain information about you.
  
  

• Age.
  (Higher weight) You provide us with your birthday, which we use to determine your age (and depending on your settings, this also leads to other fun experiences, like allowing your friends to wish you happy birthday!). As described further below, we also attempt to infer your age, which, among other things, serves as an additional way to increase the likelihood ads reach the correct and appropriate audience.
  
  

• Country/Language.
  (Higher weight) We collect your country of residence and the language you prefer for a number of reasons, including to allow Snapchat to provide you localized content and Services, to provide you with ads that are relevant to your locale and language, and to ensure ads we show you comply with local laws and regulations. We may also use your location (as described below) for these purposes.

When you view or engage with the Camera, Stories, the Snap Map, Spotlight Snaps, Lenses, My AI (see below for more details on My AI and ads), and other content and features on Snapchat, we learn (and sometimes guess) what you might be interested in. For example, if you watch or create a lot of Spotlight Snaps about basketball, we may show you an advertisement for professional basketball tickets.

We also make other inferences about you based on your activity on Snapchat, which may be informed by the information we collect from other sources, as described below. Inferences include:

• Age.
  (Higher weight) For example, while you enter your birthday when you sign up, we also infer your age based on your activity on Snapchat — this inference helps us keep our younger Snapchatters safe and enhances the accuracy of our age data. Advertisers might want to market certain products to certain age groups that may be more receptive to a particular ad or avoid groups for which an ad is not relevant or appropriate. For example, if you are under 21 in the U.S. we won’t show you ads for alcohol.
  
  

• Gender cohort.
  (Higher weight) We also infer your gender cohort based on a number of signals, including your Bitmoji, username and display name, friend demographics, and your activity on Snapchat. Similar to determining your interests, your inferred gender cohort assists our advertisers in showing you ads that may be relevant to you. For example, an advertiser may want to show ads to Snapchatters with a particular gender expression and we use inferred gender cohort to assist in showing ads to users who most closely relate to that cohort.
  
  

• Interests.
  (Higher weight) We are always trying to make our ads as relevant to you as possible, so we try to make inferences about your interests. For example, if you follow race car drivers and like watching or creating Stories about new cars or racing or click on Snapchat ads for auto racing gear, then we might guess that you’re an “Automotive Enthusiast.” Some of these guesses we call “Lifestyle Categories,” and you can review the Lifestyle Categories that we’ve guessed about you in Snapchat, and you can change or clear those Lifestyle Categories at any time. We also make other inferences about your interests that assist us in showing you content that you may be interested in — for example we have “Snapchat Content Categories,” which categorize the content on Snap that you interact with. You can review these Content Categories by downloading your data as described here.
  
  

• Your friends.
  (Lower weight) Many friends have similar interests. So, we may use information about your friends’ interactions with ads or content to determine whether to show those ads to you. For example, if your friends clicked on an ad for a new pair of shoes, we may use that to prioritize showing the same ad to you.

If you are located in the EU or UK and are under 18 we do not use inferences about your gender cohort, interests or friends’ interests to personalize the ads you see.

We also use information about what ads you interacted with previously to determine what ads to show you (or not show you) next. It’s no secret that no one likes seeing the same advertisement over and over again!

• Your activity on the websites and platforms of our advertisers and partners.
  (Higher weight) Our advertisers and partners provide us data from their own apps, websites, and platforms, which we use to help inform the ads we show. For example, if you search for a movie on a website that shares data with Snap, you may see ads for similar movies.
  
  

• We obtain this information in a few different ways.
  Including through the Snap Pixel and Snap’s Conversion API. In both instances, a small bit of code is embedded in third-party platforms (think websites and apps) that collects information about limited activities on those platforms. We also use this information to provide advertisers reports about the effectiveness of their ads.
  
  

• If you are located in the EU or UK and are under 18.
  We do not use information collected by Snap from your activity on the websites and platforms of our advertisers and partners (i.e., “Activity-Based Ads”) to determine which ads to show you. Similarly, we may also limit the use of this information to certain age ranges in other jurisdictions to comply with local laws.
  
  

• Audiences.
  (Higher weight) Our advertisers may also upload to Snap a list of their customers, so they can target ads to those customers (or individuals like their customers on Snapchat). Typically, this matching is based on a hashed version of your phone number or email. For example, let’s say you’re an avid consumer of comic books. If a new comic book is coming out, the publisher may share their fan list to Snap to help make sure that you’ll see an ad about their latest release.
  
  

• If you are located in the EU or UK and are under 18.
  We do not include you in custom audiences.
  
  

• Other data we receive from our advertisers and partners.
  We may also use other data we receive about you from our advertisers and partners to inform which ads we show, as described in our Privacy Policy.

• Device information.
  (Lower weight) When you use our products and Services, we collect information about your device, which helps us understand the operating system, screen size, language selection, apps installed, and other attributes. This in turn allows us to show you ads that are compatible with your device, in the language you prefer, targeted to specific operating systems, and aligned with your interests. For example, if you are using an iPhone, we may show you an ad for an app that is only available on iOS. Similarly, you won’t see ads in Mandarin if your device’s language is set to Farsi.
  
  

• Location information.
  (Lower weight) We think it’s important to show you ads that are relevant to your location. For example, if you are in Germany, it wouldn’t be fun or make sense for an advertiser to show you ads for movies that are only playing in the United States. We determine your approximate location based on a few pieces of data you provide us when you access our products and Services, including your IP address, and, if you grant us permission to collect it, your precise location based on GPS. We may also use places that you are near or frequent to show you ads that are relevant to you. For example, if you are near a coffee shop, an advertiser may want to show you ads for their coffee.
  
  

• If you are in California.
  You may request that Snap limit the use of your personal information, including the use of your precise location history to show you ads