How To Delete a Snapchat Account

Snapchat may not be the largest social media platform in the world, but it’s still very popular, especially among the younger generation.

It offers lots of creative features from selfie filters to fun stickers, Snapchat cameos, quirky lenses and even turning your face into a cartoon. All of these allow you to send fun and creative snaps quickly to your family or friends, but you can also look at specialty content to keep yourself entertained.

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One of its best features is the ability to send self-destructing messages, pictures and videos that disappear within seconds after posting them, which is a savior especially when you accidentally share potentially embarrassing snaps.

As exciting as the app sounds though, it’s not for everyone. If you made a Snapchat account just for fun, for example, to find out what it’s like or to understand the hype around the app, or you’ve had your account for a while now but for whatever reason, you want to chuck in the towel, we’re going to show you how to delete a Snapchat account permanently.

Reasons To Delete a Snapchat Account

For many users of any social media or online platform, privacy is a big deal. Snapchat has been known and prides itself on user privacy, which is one of the reasons why it grew in popularity.

However, it’s not the juggernaut it was a few years back especially after the Cambridge Analytica scandal that saw millions of Facebook users’ data harvested, and many Snapchat users started to question their silence over the matter.

The fact that Snapchat didn’t rise up and leverage that moment to capitalize on their strengths, or even comment on Facebook’s shortcomings seemed strange in the eyes of its users. One other thing is that over time, most of its popular features have been seen on Facebook and Instagram too, which is particularly odd.

Snapchat also announced App Stories in April 2019, a feature that allows users to share content from their cameras to another app’s ‘Story’, and this posed many questions on user privacy as the data is meant to be temporary as it has always been.

This and other reasons have led to some of its users wanting to delete their Snapchat account for good because there’s no telling whether a similar scandal would erupt if their data is accessible to other apps.

How To Download Your Snapchat Account Data

Before you delete your Snapchat account, you may want to get a full breakdown of all your Snapchat data such as your account information, overview of your friends, login history, profile data, Snap history, location and search history.

If you have a verified email address, take these steps to download your Snapchat data:

Sign into your personal account by going to accounts.snapchat.com on your browser, and click My Data.

Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the yellow Submit Request button.

You’ll get a notification that says they’re working on your data and that they’ll email it to you when it’s ready. Check your verified email address for an email with a link to download your data when it’s ready to be downloaded, and click on the link to download your Snapchat data. It will be in the form of a ZIP file labeled My Data.

How To Delete A Snapchat Account

Open Snapchat in a web browser on your computer, scroll down and click Support at the bottom of the screen just under the Community header.

Click My Account & Security.

On the left pane, click Account Information.

Select Delete My Account. You’ll get some information on your screen about your decision to delete your Snapchat account and how to go about it.

Next, go to the Accounts Portal on your browser, and enter the username and password of the account you’d like to delete.

Enter your username and password again, and click Continue.

The deletion process is the same, whether you’re using Snapchat on an iOS or Android device, but to remove the app from your phone or tablet/iPad, you don’t need to sign out first – just delete it.

For iOS devices, downpress the Snapchat app icon and press the cross symbol and select Uninstall. For Android devices, downpress the app and select Uninstall or drag it up to the trash icon or Uninstall button.

Note: You can’t delete a Snapchat account from the mobile app; it only works on the desktop version of the app. If your priority is to delete the Snapchat from your device, you can uninstall the app as you would with any other.

Snapchat has a 30-day window where your account will be deactivated before your profile and everything about it including snaps, chats, stories, and other data will be deleted permanently. However, Snapchat may retain some of your personal data for legal, business, and security reasons, for example if you made purchases through Snapchat or when you accepted its Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.

This “cooling off” period is provided in case you change your mind and decide to reactivate your account, in which case you should hold onto your username and password.

During the deactivation phase, your friends list won’t be able to contact or interact with you on Snapchat. Once deactivated, you won’t be able to log in to your account with your email address, and you can’t change your password either.

How To Reactivate Your Snapchat Account

You can resurrect your Snapchat account any moment within 30 days by logging back in to the Snapchat app with the username and password you held in the previous steps. You’ll get a message asking you to confirm the reactivation, so tap Yes.

This process may take up to 24 hours before your account can be reactivated, but you will receive an email letting you know when your account is ready to use again.