How To Stop Random People Adding You On Snapchat

Just about every Snapchat user has likely had random people add them as a friend. They’ll be going about their day, using the app like normal, and then get a notification that someone has added them on the app — despite not knowing the new follower at all. These random followers can be pretty annoying, so let’s learn how to stop them once and for all.

For a lot of people, Snapchat is often used as a more personal platform than other social media sites. Something like Twitter is great to keep public and open for everyone to follow, but for those times where folks would rather share something with a smaller group of people, Snapchat is a great place to do so. As mentioned above, however, this doesn’t exactly work if random users are adding someone’s Snapchat account.

The good news is that there are a few ways Snapchat users can prevent random people from following/adding them. Above all else, it’s strongly recommended to turn off the ‘Quick Add’ feature. When opening the search page in the Snapchat app, the Quick Add section shows a list of people Snapchat thinks that users should add. Quick Add recommendations are based on someone’s contacts and users that are mutual friends. It’s a good tool to discover friends that someone may not have added yet, but on the flip side, it also exposes people’s usernames to an unknown group of individuals. To turn this off, Snapchat says to open the app and tap the profile icon at the top-left of the screen. Tap the settings button at the top right, scroll down, tap ‘See Me in Quick Add,’ and then tap the toggle on that page. After a Snapchat user has disabled this, their username will no longer appear in the Quick Add section on other people’s app. If anything will help minimize random friends/followers on Snapchat, this is it.

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Disabling Quick Add is a great way to stop new users from finding a person’s Snapchat account, but it doesn’t do anything to block people that have already added themselves as a friend. As such, it’s recommended to go through the in-app friends list and make sure there aren’t any unwelcome users there. Open the Snapchat app, tap the profile icon at the top-left, scroll down, and tap ‘My Friends.’ If there’s someone in the My Friends list that shouldn’t be there, hold down on their name until a pop-up appears at the bottom of the screen. On that pop-up, tap ‘More,’ and then tap ‘Block.’ Not only will this remove the person from being a friend, but it will also prevent them from adding themselves as a friend in the future.

On the note of blocking communication with random users on Snapchat, it’s also recommended to update contact settings. Open the Snapchat app, tap the profile icon in the upper-left corner, tap the settings icon, scroll down, and then tap ‘Contact Me.’ If ‘Everyone’ is selected, tap ‘My Friends.’ This will make it so that only existing friends can send Snaps, direct messages, and in-app calls — thus preventing random people from communicating with a user in any way.

Outside of those settings and features, it’s also recommended to practice basic common sense with how someone treats their Snapchat account. If someone doesn’t want random people adding them on Snapchat, they should keep their username private and not share it on other social networks. Snapchat usernames cannot be changed for any reason, so don’t go and blast it all over the internet and not expect random people to add it. That may go without saying for some users, but it’s honestly one of the best ways to ensure random friends are kept to a minimum.

Source: Snapchat

About The Author

Joe Maring
(1515 Articles Published)

Joe has been actively writing and talking about consumer tech since 2012. His biggest passion lies with smartphones, but he’s happy to talk your ear off about just about anything with a CPU. He lives in Kalamazoo, MI with his wife, two cats, and pit bull/boxer mix.

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