Beware! Snapchat now has the right to use all your photos, however they want

Snapchat, the platform for messaging in text, voice, video or photo, was used world-wide for one basic and undoubtedly the best feature—self destructive messaging. However, the social platform went down on its knees when the recent spate of private photos, which contained nudity, was spilled online. Snapchat’s servers were hacked earlier and millions of photos which contained regular to nude selfies were all over the internet. Snapchat was being used via third-party applications, which had the ability to store all messages that passed through it, even though they were self-destructible ones.

Last year, Snapchat admitted that the app wasn’t truly secure and admitted that they were not ‘actually’ automatically deleting the messages that were sent across by users. It was actually possible to recover the messages from the user’s device.

‘While we were focused on building, some things didn’t get the attention they could have. One of those was being more precise with how we communicated with the Snapchat community. This morning we entered into a consent decree with the FTC that addresses concerns raised by the commission. Even before today’s consent decree was announced, we had resolved most of those concerns over the past year by improving the wording of our privacy policy, app description, and in-app just-in-time notifications,’ wrote Snapchat on their blog in May 2014.

Now that Snapchat has changed their terms and conditions on October 28, 2015 (see 2. Your Content), this means that every content, be it text messages, voice messages, photos or videos, will now be royalty-free and transferable to the host to store, use, display, modify, publish, publicly perform, broadcast and a lot more by Snapchat.

‘Many of our Services let you create, upload, post, send, receive, and store content. When you do that, you retain whatever ownership rights in that content you had to begin with.

But you grant Snapchat a worldwide, perpetual, royalty-free, sub-licensable, and transferable license to host, store, use, display, reproduce, modify, adapt, edit, publish, create derivative works from, publicly perform, broadcast, distribute, syndicate, promote, exhibit, and publicly display that content in any form and in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed). We will use this license for the limited purpose of operating, developing, providing, promoting, and improving the Services; researching and developing new ones; and making content submitted through the Services available to our business partners for syndication, broadcast, distribution, or publication outside the Services. Some Services offer you tools to control who can—and cannot—see your content under this license. For more information about how to tailor who can watch your content, please take a look at our privacy policy and support site,’ mentions the T&C.

It goes on to add, ‘While we’re not required to do so, we may access, review, screen, and delete your content at any time and for any reason, including if we think your content violates these Terms. You alone though remain responsible for the content you create, post, store, or send through the Services.’

So photos you are taking, decent or nude, could be temporary from your side, but it could appear on Snapchat’s promotional material, on its website or on their social accounts.

Therefore, you better read through and accept the terms and conditions before you use the services from Snapchat. Else, if you are a ‘sexter’, you will never know how and where your explicit photos could be used. So if you are blindly accepting the T&C, it means that you are granting consent to the app for doing whatever it likes with your photos. The Mirror UK reported that the new T&C has come under scrutiny from parents groups and online communities who have flagged the service for potential cyber bullying and sexting.