Last month, Snapchat updated their app with new custom stories which allow users to collaborate and create stories on Snapchat and share with their followers. One of Snapchat’s long-standing unique features is that the Snaps get auto-deleted after a certain amount of time — but is it really true? Undoubtedly they get deleted from your device, but they might stay on the Snapchat servers for as long as 30 days before actually getting deleted from there too. In their privacy policy, Snapchat states, “We automatically delete the content of your Snaps (the photo and video messages that you send your friend) from our servers after we detect that a Snap has been opened by all recipients or has expired”. Snapchat doesn’t do this deliberately, but it’s done so that your story reaches out to the intended audience before getting deleted.
“Once we’ve been notified that a snap has been opened by all of its recipients, it is deleted from our servers. If a snap is still unopened after 30 days, it too is deleted from our servers,” the company stated. That means if even one of your contacts that you’ve sent the Snap to doesn’t open the photo or video, then the data will stay up on the Snapchat servers for 30 days. This, however, doesn’t protect you against other users saving (via a screenshot) and sharing your Snaps either on the app or elsewhere on the internet. If you’re worried about someone misusing your Snaps, you should filter your contact list as those accessing your snaps can also be saving them indefinitely and even you can see if someone has taken a screenshot of your Snap, it doesn’t really help. There is an official way to save your Snaps to the service’s servers by saving them as Snapchat Memories and they stay there until deleted by the user.
