Snapchat Doesn't Secretly Learn The Time You Were Born - Full Fact

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Snapchat doesn’t secretly learn the time you were born 13 August 2021

What was claimed

Snapchat knows what time you were born even if you don’t put those details in the app.

Our verdict

Birthday, time of birth and place of birth are all entered manually by the user to access certain in-app features.

A post on Facebook implies the social media app Snapchat independently gathers information about their users, specifically their time of birth. 

The post includes a screenshot of the app which shows the birthday of a Snapchat user, their time of birth and where they were born under the banner “My Astrological Birthday”. 

The picture caption says: “Did anybody know that Snapchat somehow knows what time you were born Swear I don’t remember filling it out”. 

However, the time of birth is added manually by users to access a set of in-app features based on star signs. 

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As Snapchat’s website points out, users must input both their birthdate and time of birth for it to work. 

This was confirmed in a fact check by USA Today where Snapchat group product manager Jeremy Voss said birth date, time and location information “can only be inputted by the users themselves” in the app. 

Users can also delete this information from Snapchat via the app’s settings.

This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as missing context because users add their time of birth manually.

• By Tom Norton

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