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How to delete Snapchat

Niamh Lynch

Niamh Lynch

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You’ve installed Snapchat on your iPhone or Android device, and taken some hilarious/incriminating/risque photos and videos. That’s all great fun, but maybe you’re tired of the app, getting a bit paranoid, or have just decided to move on.

So, how do you make sure your account is closed and your photos deleted?

How to delete Snapchat

1. Uninstall the app

iPhone: Just long-hold the icon on iOS and wait for the x to appear. Press the x, and confirm the uninstall. Simple.

Android: Go to Settings > Applications > Snapchat and hit Uninstall.

2. Delete your account

To make sure that you’ve really washed Snapchat out of your hair, you’re also going to need to delete your account. This is simple: just go to the Snapshot account delete page, enter your username and password, and confirm deletion. The Snapchat developers warn you that this could take up to 48 hours.

Delete you Snapchat account

3. What about my pictures?

The whole point of Snapchat is that your photos are temporary and, deleted after a few seconds. As people like to point out, once something is on the internet, it can never be removed, but for most people, Snapchat’s deletion works just fine. Recovering photos could be a costly and time-consuming process, and unless your photos are of interest to the FBI, I don’t think you have much to worry about.

That said, think back over your Snapchat history. When you take a snap, you can save the image to your own phone, so make sure there are none lurking on your device. It would also be possible for someone to have taken a screenshot of your photo, but Snapshot would have warned you if they had. Finally, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that someone could have used a camera or second phone to take a picture of your picture. That’s much harder to legislate against, but, then again, you wouldn’t have used Snapshot if you weren’t happy with a little risk.

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