How to Recover Your Snapchat Account (2022)
Before you start the recovery process of your account, you should know what has made you lose access to your account. Sometimes we just forget our password. Other times, someone might have hacked our account and logged us out of it. We are going to see how we can recover access to our accounts in both of these cases.
How to Recover Snapchat Account if You Have Lost Your Password
If you have forgotten your Snapchat account’s password and cannot log in, you can reset the password to quickly regain access to your account. Here is how you can reset your account password:
- Launch Snapchat on your iPhone or Android phone and tap on “Log in”. Enter your username or email and then tap on the “Forgot your password?” button.
- Now, choose whether you want to recover your account using your phone or email. Let’s first select the email option. Selecting the “via Email” option will open a browser window, where you have to enter your email ID and tap on the “Submit” button.
- Snapchat will send you an email with the link to reset the password. Tap on the link and enter your new password to reset it.
- In case you chose to recover the account using your phone number, enter your phone number and choose if you want to use the message or call option.
- Now, all you need to do is enter the OTP you receive and then enter the new password you want to use. After resetting the password, you can go back to the login page and sign in to your Snapchat account.
Recover Snapchat Account if You Forgot Your Username and Email
If you have not used Snapchat in a while and are trying to get back in the game, it might be hard if you don’t remember your username. The easiest way to recover your account is to use your email instead of the username and then use the forgot password method described above. However, what happens if you have forgotten the email ID you used to create that account? Well, here is what you can do about it:
- Make a list of all email IDs that you have. Most people who forget their Snapchat email ID have multiple email IDs and simply don’t remember which one they used to create the account. So, make sure you have listed all your email IDs.
- Now, launch the app on your phone and proceed through the recovery process. Use the recovery by email option and enter all your emails one by one. The emails that are not associated with any email account will result in an error reading “Email address is invalid”.
Repeat the same process until you find the right email ID and then use it to reset the password and recover your account. Follow the steps in the section above for the same.
How to Recover Stolen Snapchat Account
Recovering a stolen Snapchat Account is not easy. How hard the recovery will be, depends on the changes that a hacker has made to your account. If you find out that your account info has been leaked in a data dump (haveibeenpwned is a good place to check), all you need to do is change your password so that no one can access your account.
If someone has already accessed your account and changed the password, you can use the password reset route to take back control of your account. However, if someone has changed not only the recovery email ID but also the phone number associated with that account, you can do nothing about it. The only thing left to do is contact Snapchat Support, fill up a form, and hope that they recover the account for you.
How to Secure Your Snapchat Account
It’s always better to secure your Snapchat account from the start than to wait for a tragedy to strike and then scramble to deal with it later. There are a few steps that you can take to make sure that your account is always secure and there’s a very low probability of anyone getting into it without your knowledge.
Make Sure Your Email ID and Number are Updated
Creating an account on Snapchat is pretty easy. All you need to do is to enter your name, birthday, and either a phone number or email ID. In fact, it can be any email ID and phone number, and you don’t have to use a real one. While this is great if you don’t want to share your personal email ID and number with Snapchat, it also means that if you lose your password or someone hacks into your account, there will be no way to get it back.
To stay on the safer side, open the app and check if you have verified your Snapchat number and email address from the Settings page. To do that, tap on your profile icon at the top left, then tap on the Settings icon at the top right.
Enable Two-Factor Authentication
While you are in Snapchat’s settings, it would be also great if you enable the two-factor authentication as it decreases the chances of anyone breaking into your account. To enable it, open Settings, tap on “Two-Factor Authentication”, and then follow the on-screen instructions to enable it.
Generate a Recovery Code
After enabling two-factor authentication, make sure you generate a recovery code so you don’t get locked out of your account. You can use a recovery code in case you lost access to your two-factor authentication app. To generate a recovery code on Snapchat, follow the steps below:
- Open Snapchat’s settings page and tap on “Two-Factor Authentication”. From the next page, choose “Recovery mode” to generate the Snapchat recovery code.
- Now, tap on “Generate” and enter your Snapchat account’s password to access your recovery code. Make sure you save your recovery code so that you can access your Snapchat account if/when you get locked out.
Use Best Practices for Passwords
While this is common sense, not many people adhere to it. You should always follow the best practices for creating a password. That means creating different passwords for different accounts and using a long and random password with various combinations of numbers, letters, and special characters.
With multiple social media platforms, keeping up with the username and password can be a hassle. However, it doesn’t have to be. You can start using a good password manager to save all your passwords and auto-fill the credentials when you need them.
Take Control of Your Locked Snapchat Account
I hope this article was able to help you recover your Snapchat account. If you take away anything from this article, I would like it to be the fact that you should make it harder for others to steal your account. Meanwhile, if your Snapchat is not working or if your Snapchat is not sending Snaps, we have dedicated guides to help you fix these issues. Also, don’t forget to check our Snapchat tricks article to get the most out of this social media platform.
