Terms of Service - Blog 5

I read snapchats terms & conditions to see what kind of things they had, the part I was most interested in finding out was their privacy because one time someone told me that snapchat stores every picture taken and I want to see if that’s true or not. When I first looked at the terms of service it didn’t seem like too much, until I started reading. I had never actually attempted to read any type of terms of service for any social media site, so this was really all new information to me. I typically don’t read them because I know they’re gonna use my information so I just assume that is what most of it is going to consist of so I just hit accept and go on with my day. Snapchat doesn’t have one long terms and conditions page, they have different categories with separate links so I only read the “terms of service” and “privacy.”

here's some of my personal
snapchat pictures :)

One thing I didn’t remember being a rule was that you had to be at least 13, I don’t know if that was a rule when I signed up or I was just already 13 so I didn’t really pay attention. The most of what they talk about is what I thought they would, what kind of things get shared with other companies. This was mostly in the “privacy” section but also in “terms of service,” they talk about the different types of information they gather and how they use it. They gather basic information that you put in when you sign up, they use things like map locations, and what services you use in snapchat. They give basic information (names, bitmoji, content you publicly post, etc) to third party companies and other users, but mainly they use the information to improve their own apps. The thing that surprised me most was that there was a whole paragraph that explained that your bitmoji and its looks are given to snapchat affiliates to use in their own way. It kind of took me a second because I never even thought about that happening! 

Under the information they gathered came the answer to the question I’ve been waiting for, do they save all snaps and chats that are sent? No they do not, information for your account is saved in their server but once it is detected that snaps and chats are opened they are deleted from the servers. It also goes on to say that you do have control over your information, as far as sharing it with other snapchatters, you can delete or block anyone at any time so they can’t communicate with you. Also, once you delete a snapchat account the information disappears from snapchat servers.

When people joke about your “FBI agent” watching you through your phone camera it may actually be true, while they don’t work for the FBI snapchat can “access, review, screen, and delete [your] content at any time for any reason. Lots of the “terms and services” has to do with the safety of you and other users. They try their best to police content but can’t cover it all. They state that the user that posts their content, publicly, is their responsibility and is treated like public property. I figured this was kind of a way for snapchat to cover itself if something happens that they miss. A big part of this was “safety,” they went through a list of things that you couldn’t do to other people with your content (harass, defame, etc). One thing I thought was funny was that they had to state that you can’t “buy, sell, rent, or lease access” to ‘snaps’, so I guess the girl who sold her nudes to raise money for the australian fires had to use a different form of communication.

What I appreciated most about all of the articles, was that they tried to remove legal jargon as best they could so it was easy to understand. Most of the times they had a separate section for EU users or California residents, which I thought was interesting because I never thought about how there were different laws that would apply to those users. At the end of every article was a statement that discussed how they are always changing and improving but they never do so without letting their users know, so maybe next time I get a notification I’ll read it? Probably not, but maybe.