U.S. State Privacy Notice

Effective: December 31, 2023

We’ve created this U.S. State Privacy Notice (“Notice”) to provide additional information for residents of U.S. states that provide for the privacy rights described below as specified under state law. Our Privacy Principles and the privacy controls we offer to all users are in line with these laws — this Notice makes sure we cover state-specific requirements. For example, all users can request a copy of their data, request deletion, and control their privacy settings in the app. For the full picture, check out our Privacy Policy.
We’ll start with a summary of your rights and get into the details later.
  • You have the right to know whether we sell or share your data and to opt-out if we do. Good news! We don’t sell or share your data as defined by these state laws.
  • You have the right to receive an overview of the personal information we collect, how we use it, and which service providers we disclose it to.
  • You can request access to your data, get a copy, and ask us to correct or delete your personal information.
  • Your authorized agent can always contact us if they have a question on your behalf.
  • You may have additional specific privacy rights in your state. We address those below in state-specific sections. 
By the way, we’ll update this Notice periodically, but at least every 12 months, and let you know when we’ve made updates consistent with our Privacy Policy.

Your Rights

Let’s start with your rights.
  • Right to know what personal information we collect and correct it. You have the right to request details on the specific personal information we’ve collected about you and the right to correct inaccurate information. We provide this information in our Privacy Center, but you can also get this information by contacting us. In addition, you can request a copy of your data here or directly through your settings. You can also access and edit most of your basic account information right in your settings. You can also use Download My Data to obtain a copy of your information in a portable format, so you can move it or store it wherever you want. 
  • Right to know who we share your data with. We don’t sell your data or share your data for cross-context behavioral advertising, but we do share your information with service providers for legitimate business purposes. For example, we use service providers to store and host your data. See the Sharing Your Information section below for more details.
  • Right to deletion. You have the right to request deletion of your data, unless an exception applies. Examples of exceptions include when we need to keep data to meet legal obligations, detect fraud, investigate reports of abuse or other Terms of Service violations, or fix security issues. Upon your verified request, we’ll delete your personal information (unless an exception applies) and will direct our service providers to do the same. By design, we have pretty short retention terms, so most data is deleted quickly anyway. See the How Long We Keep Your Information section of our Privacy Policy for more details. 
  • Right to get a timely response. You have the right to make two free requests in any 12-month period. We will respond to your request within 45 days, and in more difficult cases we may extend our response time by another 45 days. Our support team is pretty great, so they tend to respond a lot quicker. The easiest way to get information is by following the instructions above, but you or your authorized agent can also email privacy @ snap.com. We may ask authorized agents to provide a Power of Attorney or similar to verify their authorization.
  • Right to non-Discrimination. It goes without saying, but we will not hold it against you when you exercise any of your rights. In fact, we encourage you to review your privacy settings closely and reach out to us with your questions.
  • Right to opt-out of targeted advertising. You can do this on Snapchat by adjusting your in-app advertising preferences to turn off activity-based ads as described here.
  • Right to opt-out of profiling. You have the right to opt out of profiling in furtherance of decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects concerning the consumer. Good news! Snap does not engage in such profiling as defined by applicable law, so there’s no need to opt out.
  • Right to appeal. If we deny your rights request, and you live in a state that provides for this right, you may have the right to appeal that decision. We will provide you with the necessary information to submit an appeal at that time. Alternatively, you can appeal a decision by completing this form.
The easiest way to exercise your rights is by logging into your account so we can verify your identity. You can also email us, but then we’ll require some additional information (like your username and email or phone number associated with your account) to authenticate your identity and ownership of your account.

We Don’t Sell Your Data

We don’t sell your data and we don’t share your data with third parties for cross-context behavioral advertising. To keep the lights on at Snap HQ, we do show ads. In the event any personal information is disclosed in order to show those ads, it would only be disclosed to our service provider(s) acting on our behalf. Service providers cannot use your personal information for their own purposes. We do our best to make these ads relevant, so they’re enjoyable. Our Support Site provides information on do not track, advertising, and interest preferences.

Information We Collect

As detailed in our Privacy Policy and How We Use Your Information page, we collect personal information for a wide range of purposes, but the main reason we collect information is to offer you the best possible products and services. Privacy by design is the starting point. This means we make sure we don’t collect more information than necessary or collect information for purposes that are different, unrelated, or incompatible with what’s detailed in our Privacy Policy.
In the last 12 months, we’ve collected the following personal information:
A. Identifiers, such as your name, display name, postal address, unique personal identifier, online identifier, IP address, email address, username, or other similar identifiers. We mainly use these to offer our services, for example to create your account and send Chats & Snaps to your real friends.
B. Personal information categories listed in the California Customer Records provisions, such as your name, address, telephone number, payment number (last 4 digits only). For example, we use this information so you can buy your latest Spectacles. Keep in mind that some personal information included in this category may overlap with other categories.
C. Characteristics of protected classifications under California or federal law, such as your gender and age. The main purpose for collecting this information is to verify your age, ensure you are eligible to use our services, and to show you more relevant ads and content in Discover.
D. Commercial information, such as products or services purchased, obtained, or considered, or other purchasing or consuming histories or tendencies. For example, we may keep this information when you purchase items through the Snap Store (where you buy your Bitmoji stickers and mugs) or when you engage with ads on our platform.
E. Internet or other electronic network activity information, such as session logs, search history, information on a consumer's interaction with a website, application, or advertisement. For example, we may store your search history when you are searching for Bitmoji terms or looking for Snaps and other content in Search.
F. Geolocation data, such as your physical location. Snapchat uses your device’s location to offer certain location-based features. For example, we use your device’s location to provide Geofilters based on where you’re at or what’s going on around you, or we can use your location to position the Map to show you what’s nearby. Learn more. We also use geolocation data to serve more personalized ads to you in the app. While we may share this information with our service providers in order to make our services run, we don’t sell or share your precise geolocation with any third-parties for cross-context behavioral advertising or to use for their own purposes. 
G. Audio, electronic, visual, or similar information, such as Snaps and other visual content. We collect Snaps you create, but deletion is still our default with a few exceptions. Learn more.
H. Inferences drawn from other personal information. We may use this information to create a profile reflecting your preferences and characteristics. For example, we’ll use this information to create a list of your interests and preferences to serve you more relevant ads or content in Discover. Learn more.
I. Sensitive personal information. With your permission, we collect some information from you that is considered sensitive like your precise geolocation and Voice Chat messages you’d like transcribed. We use this information to make features available to you that rely on this information, like the Map. We may also use this information to provide you with more relevant advertising. We don’t sell or share sensitive personal information with any third-parties for cross-context behavioral advertising or to use for their own purposes.
We may collect this data when you provide it to us, when you use our services, or when we receive it from third parties. For more details on the sources, see the Information We Collect section in our Privacy Policy.
For your information, personal information does not include publicly available information from government records and de-identified or aggregated consumer information.

How Long We Keep Your Information

As detailed in the How Long We Keep Your Information section of our Privacy Policy, we have pretty short retention terms, so most data is deleted quickly. For detailed information about how long we store different types of content, check out our Support Site.

Sharing Your Information

While we don’t “share” your personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising, we may share your personal information for a business purpose(s) or at your direction. For example, we share your personal information with our data hosting and storage providers. We enter into agreements with our service providers in which they can only use your information for specific purposes and are required to ensure its confidentiality.
In the past 12 months, we’ve disclosed categories A-I for a business purpose or at your direction with our affiliates, service providers, and third parties. For more details on the business purpose(s) for which, and the third parties, we share data with, see the How We Share Information section in our Privacy Policy.

California

If you live in California, you also have the right to request to limit the use and disclosure of your sensitive personal information that is used to infer characteristics about you as provided by the CCPA. You can do so by following the instructions described here.
Metrics On Your Rights
Transparency is important to us, especially when it comes to helping you understand and exercise your rights under the CCPA. That’s why we’ve published some key metrics below detailing how often our users engage with us to request their CCPA rights and how we respond in kind. Have a look!
Right to Know
Received: 10
Complied with: 9
Denied: 1
Average response time: 7 days
Right to Delete
Received: 41
Complied with: 41
Denied: 0
Average response time: 5 days
Right to Opt-out of Sale
This one is easy. We don’t sell your data, so we don’t process, or collect metrics on, opt-out requests for the sale of consumer data.
The metrics above are for calendar year 2022 (January through December), and represent interactions where users have contacted Snap and explicitly requested to exercise their CCPA rights. Just so you know, users are able to download their data, including Memories and saved Chats, and delete their data, in the app or by deleting their account, using our self-serve tools. For example, in 2022, over 26 million users requested account deletion using our self-serve tools and in the last year, over 10 million users downloaded their data. We’ll update these numbers from time to time to ensure we are providing you the most up-to-date information.

Nevada

We do not sell your covered information, as defined under Chapter 603A of the Nevada Revised Statutes. If you still have questions about your covered information or anything else in our Privacy Policy, just contact us.