How to Clear Your Snapchat Privacy
Snapchat is releasing a new update to make it even easier for your friends to find you on their Snap Map. While you have to choose to have your Bitmoji appear on the map, this is a great time to review your Snapchat privacy settings (and say goodbye to Snap Map if you’re not interested).
Avoiding the Snap Map Trap
I’ll admit, I can’t remember agreeing to choose Snapchat’s “Snap Map”, but I’m sure I absentmindedly clicked on approval shortly after the feature debuted last June. Since then – for the little I use Snapchat – this feature has always seemed a little creepy to me. It’s one thing to add location information as a line of text above a photo on a social service; Another thing is to have a nice working map that allows you to scan where your friends are (or have been) based on the most recent publicly available snapshots they sent out.
To access the Snap Map in Snapchat’s awful new interface , open the app and pinch. Resist the urge to touch anywhere on the map, or you will start to see any publicly available snapshots of that location. Instead, click on the gear icon in the upper right corner. From this settings screen, you’ll be able to turn on the ghost mode, which prevents you from appearing on the Snap Map, or at least filter out only certain friends with whom you are comfortable sharing your location.
Reimagining Snapchat privacy in general
As long as you have the app open, now is a great time to review the rest of Snapchat’s privacy settings. To do this, return from Snap Maps by clicking the arrow icon in the upper left corner. Then click here again – on the Bitmoji head or whatever icon that appears to the left of the Snapchat search bar – to open your profile. Greet your Snapchat QR Code (or “Snapcode”), which you’ve probably never used.
Click on the gear icon in the upper right corner of your Snapchat profile to finally access the main Snapchat settings menu. While there are many useful options, here are the ones you should take care of the most:
- Mobile number
Click on your phone number and you can indicate if you want others to find you if they know your numbers. On the one hand, it’s an easy way to start having sex with the person you gave your bar number to the night before. On the other hand, it’s an easy way to make sure the person you gave your bar number to last night can never slip into your Snaps.
- Login confirmation
There is no reason why you shouldn’t use two-factor authentication for your Snapchat account. The next time you (or someone else) try to log into your account, you will need to verify your login by entering a number obtained from a text message or a third-party authentication app. (And don’t forget to create and save a recovery code somewhere in case you move devices or lose your phone number.)
- Additional services> Management
If you don’t want to share “location or usage” data with Snapchat map providers – all anonymously, but still – you can turn it off from this screen; just click on the “Maps” section.
- Who can…
This entire section in the Snapchat settings menu is important, as this is where you can set default privacy options for basic Snapchat features. You can specify whether everyone or only your friends can contact you using Snap, chats and calls; you can set the default view rights for Snap Stories (everyone, just your friends or a custom subset of your friends); you can make the same Snap Maps privacy settings we mentioned earlier; and you can opt out of Snapchat’s Quick Add feature, which allows another user to potentially add you as a friend if you have a mutual friend.