Snapchat recently hit 100 million monthly active users in countries like India. Although the numbers are small compared to other social media platforms such as Facebook, Whatsapp or Instagram, this is a remarkable achievement. If you’re in the 16 to 25 age group, there’s a good chance you use Snapchat to click images with various filters and send streaks within the app.
While it’s all fun with friends and family, if you want to take a break or permanently delete your Snapchat account, you can do so. Snapchat provides you with the ability to deactivate, delete, and reactivate your account. It also allows you to download data that is stored on the Snapchat server. However, it is important to note that you can only delete or deactivate your Snapchat account from the web portal. The mobile app does not allow you to delete or deactivate your account. That being said, here is how you can perform these actions:
How do I download my data before permanently deleting my Snapchat account?
Social networking applications like Snapchat ask for your personal information and store it as data on their servers. If you delete your Snapchat account, you must get your data back from Snapchat. Here are the steps to upload your Snapchat account details:
- Sign in to Snapchat.com on the web portal.
- Now you can see a list of options here, click “My Data”.
- Scroll down and click the Submit button at the bottom of the page.
- Snapchat will now send you an email to your registered email address.
- Click the link attached to the email and your data will be downloaded to your computer in. zip.
How to delete a Snapchat account?
Snapchat allows you to permanently delete your account. If you want to delete your Snapchat account, follow these steps:
- Sign in to Snapchat.com on the web portal.
- Select “Delete my account”from the list of options.
- It will now ask you to verify your account details before deleting your account.
- Once you have entered your details, click the “Continue”button and your account will be immediately deactivated and permanently deleted within 30 days if you do not log in again.
After deleting an account, your account information, settings, friends, snaps, chats, history, device data, and location data will be removed from Snapchat’s main user database. However, Snapchat may store some of your information, such as your purchase history.
How to deactivate a Snapchat account?
The process for deactivating your Snapchat account is identical to deleting it, and you may wonder what the difference is. In short, when you delete your account, you get a 30 day period during which the account status remains deactivated. If you do not reactivate it, your account will be permanently deleted.
With that in mind, if you want to deactivate your Snapchat account for a maximum of 30 days, follow these steps:
- Sign in to Snapchat.com on the web portal.
- Now you can see a list of options here, click on the “Delete my account”block.
- It will now ask you to verify your account details before deleting your account.
- After you enter your details, click the “Continue”button and your account will be deactivated for 30 days.
How to reactivate a Snapchat account?
As mentioned earlier, Snapchat doesn’t delete your account immediately, but it does give you 30 days to restore it. If you have deleted your Snapchat account and wish to reactivate it, you can do so during this time. All you have to do is go to Snapchat.com and sign in with your deleted account details. After logging in, you can use your Snapchat account as usual. All your data will also be available in your account.
Please note that it may take up to 24 hours to reactivate your account and fully restore your data. Please note that if you choose not to reactivate your account within 30 days, your account will be permanently gone and you will not be able to recover it after that.
What personal data can be downloaded from Snapchat?
If you are wondering what kind of data you can download from your Snapchat account, here are the categories of data that can be downloaded:
- Login history and account information
- User and public profiles
- Snap and chat history
- Memories
- Purchase and store history
- Snapchat Support History
- Friends
- Location
- Search history
- Bitmoji
Please note that this is data that can be downloaded from your Snapchat account and not something that Snapchat actually stores. Snapchat stores a huge amount of information besides the list mentioned above.