Snapchat’s transparency report indicates few law enforcement inquiries

The popular photo messaging platform, Snapchat, released its first transparency report where the company outlined the number of legal requests for information about some of the services’ users.

Perhaps a reflection of the fact that Snapchat makes a habit of removing data from its servers as a matter of common practice, the company received 375 requests from US legal sources. When you consider that Snapchat handles roughly 800 million snaps per month, 375 is a pretty small number.

Other social platforms receive an order of magnitude many more legal requests for data, but they also have a much larger user base. Of course, this could also be a reflection of law enforcement not wanting to see an adverse amounts of risqué imagery.

The other reason why there may not be as many legal inquiries, is that Snapchat does not collect and collate as much data compared to services like Facebook or any of Google’s multiple services. Snapchat sees the photo (with date), device contacts (tied to whom you are sending the photo), device type, geo-location (if enabled), and you web-browsing history.

Outside of the US, the number of legal requests for information were even fewer, with a couple dozen requests altogether. What is interesting is that because Snapchat does not store mountains and mountains of data spanning any appreciable time frame, the company cannot necessarily provide the data being sought, and in some cases, did not according to the report.

Snapchat intends to publish a transparency report every six months.


sources: Snapchat via Observer