Much to the chagrin of every teenager on the planet, Snapchat is getting more and more popular with adults. Of course, an app designed to put the more personal aspects of your life on display is bound to get adults in trouble with, say, bosses, coworkers, ex flames, and more.
As people become increasingly concerned with their public and professional image on the app, it behooves Snapchat to start looking into more refined ways of protecting ones privacy.
In the meantime, there are some things you can do to keep unwanted eyes from prying into your snaps.
How to Hide Your Snapchat Story
Your Snapchat story is a repository of snaps that you want people to be able to see at their leisure. Snaps in My Story last for 24-hours before disappearing. You can edit who has the ability to see your story. Follow these steps from the Snapchat camera.
- Tap on the ghost icon in the upper left hand corner. If you use bitmoji, it will look like your bitmoji instead.
- Tap the settings icon in the upper right hand corner.
- Scroll down to View My Story under Who Can… and tap it.
- Choose one of the 3 available options.
You can allow everyone to see your story. In other words, anyone who chooses to follow you (whether you know them or not) will get a peek.
You can allow only friends to see your story. This means that people need to follow you AND you need to follow them back before they can see your story.
You can customize who can and can’t view your story from your list of friends. If you select this option, tap on the names of any friends that you do NOT want looking at your story.
How to Hide All Snaps
You don’t really need to hide all of your snaps. When you send a snap the traditional way, you get to select who in your contact list to send it to. This list will include friends and some followers. Followers who aren’t your friend and who have set their contact privacy to “friends only” will not appear on this list.
How to Hide Someone Else’s Snaps
Maybe you’re here because you’re tired of seeing someone else’s constant updates. You don’t want to unfollow them because you like taking the occasional peek at their story. What do you do? If they aren’t your friend on the app (in other words, they don’t follow you back), then you can easily prevent them from snapping you without unfollowing them.
- Tap on the ghost icon in the upper left hand corner. If you use bitmoji, it will look like your bitmoji instead.
- Tap the settings icon in the upper right hand corner.
- Scroll down to Contact Me under Who Can… and tap it.
- Choose My Friends.
There is no way to single out specific users in this case.
Let’s say you don’t want to do this. You have a lot of followers that you don’t follow and you enjoy receiving the occasional snap from them. How can you stop this one user from snapping you? Simple. You block them.
-
-
- Tap on the ghost icon in the upper left hand corner. If you use bitmoji, it will look like your bitmoji instead.
-
- Tap Add Friends.
- Search for their Snapchat name.
- Tap on the name.
- Tap Settings.
-
-
- TapBlock.
Voila. You will no longer be hearing from this person. Incidentally, they won’t be seeing any of your snaps either.
Can Users Tell If They’ve Been Blocked?
No notifications go out if you block someone or hide your story from them. Therefore, it won’t be immediately obvious. But a determined user can use tricks to infer that they’ve been blocked. And if you just hide your story from them? Well, they won’t be able to see your story. So, we’re guessing they’ll think something’s up. Better start coming up with some good explanations.