Snapchat is one of the most popular messaging apps today, thanks to its focus on sending images, but also making them unavailable after a brief period.

The app has come a long way since its launch in 2011, and it holds the title of being the 5th most downloaded app of the decade (source).

However, if you have privacy concerns, or you wish to distance yourself from the app and delete your account, you can easily do it at any time.

Today, we will show how you can do it, as well as a couple of valid reasons why you might want to.

How to deactivate my Snapchat account

Whether you have had enough of ‘Snap, or you wish to deactivate your account for some other reason, it makes no difference.

The steps are the same, and it is effortless to do. Follow these steps:

1. Go to the Snapchat Accounts page.
2. Log in with the login info for the account you wish to delete.
3. Click the Delete My Account button.
4. Once again enter the username and password of the account you wish to delete.
5. Press Continue.

And, that’s it. After you do this, your account will be disabled for the following 30 days.

But what if you want to remove things on a more permanent basis? Keep scrolling to find out.

How to delete my Snapchat account completely

While it will be sorry to see you go, Snapchat also allows you to delete your account permanently.

This is a good option if you have privacy concerns, or if you’ve become bored with the app, and don’t want to leave any of your details behind.

However, it is worth noting that you cannot do it instantly.

Instead, you need to follow the steps for deactivation, mentioned above. We also said that your account will be deactivated for 30 days.

However, after these 30 days, your account will not be activated automatically. Instead, it will be entirely deleted, with no chance of recovery after the 30 days.

In other words, you can deactivate your account, and if you plan to return it, you can do it within a month.

If you wish to delete it, deactivate it and don’t log in during the 30 days, and the rest will take care of itself.

Can I reactivate my Snapchat account?

On the other hand, if you wish only to take a short break from Snapchat, and you do plan to return after a while, it is effortless to do so.

After deactivation, log back into your account at any point within the 30 days after deactivation.

Doing so will instantly return you to Snapchat’s network, and restore all of your data, just like you have never left at all.

However, note that you won’t be able to do this if the 30-day limit is breached.

If you wait for too long, Snapchat will delete your account permanently on the 31st day after deactivation, and you won’t be able to get anything back.

Reasons to delete your Snapchat account

Many of us have joined pretty much every social media network as they came out, with the desire not to miss out, reach out to our friends, share our day, thoughts, art, and more.

Snapchat is no different.

The app’s purpose is simple enough – you take a picture of yourself or something that you saw or did and send it to a friend.

Your friend can see it for 10 seconds, and then the photo is deleted.

Or is it?

One reason to delete your Snapchat is that there is no real privacy within the app, even though it claims otherwise.

Remember that everything you or anyone else posts on the web is public and available to anyone who knows how to dig deep enough.

Your device shares data with or without you knowing it whenever you connect, and Snapchat is no different.

You may think that you are anonymous, but you are monitored on this network as well. Worst of all, your image is not permanently deleted from its servers immediately, just from your app.

As many users feel the security of the near instant deletion, the app quickly became popular as a way to send sexy or revealing images.

With reports that images can be hanging around user’s devices or Snapchat servers, it doesn’t make for calming reading.

So, if you felt secure that your images were almost instantly deleted, sadly it seems this isn’t the case.

How to actually be private online?

If you wish to achieve real privacy on the internet, you should know that doing so is not easy.

You will have to make some sacrifices, and disable most, if not all, of your social media, including the likes of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and more.

If you wish to keep your social accounts, you cannot achieve total privacy; that is just how it is.

You can improve it a bit, by using security software such as VPN, not posting photos of yourself, and not updating your accounts after everything you do.

However, as long as you have social media accounts, or use Google and its services, you will be tracked at all times.

This is just how it is these days, and that’s the price of having all of our beneficial technology at our disposal.

This is why they are all free to use, as you don’t pay with money, but with your privacy and anonymity.

Is it worth the convenience?

Summary

Snapchat is a fun app, without a doubt, but once you get to explore it, you will quickly realise that the privacy that it promises probably not as good as it sounds.

You can either take a month-long break from the app or let your account expire and be deleted completely.

Whichever you choose, you’ll find the steps above to do just that.

Illustration © Yshevchuk0206 | Dreamstime.com