What does Snapchat know about you? New tool offers some answers

LOS ANGELES – Snapchat released an update Tuesday that makes it more competitive with chat apps from Facebook and Google by providing for audio-clip sharing, video calling and additional emojis.

But lost in users’ excitement for the new features was another significant launch, one that doesn’t actually reside in the Los Angeles company’s app.

Snapchat’s website now has a “Download My Data” tool, which the company says gives users a digital folder containing “most” of the information it stores about them. Google and Facebook already have similar account-data tools.

The data dump from Snapchat shows users’ recent logins, their history of contacting customer support, the number of messages they’ve recently sent and received, and purchases they’ve made on the app, including location-based digital stickers or replays of ephemeral messages.

Users can get a list of all the messages they’ve submitted to the company for inclusion into publicly accessible Live and Local Stories. The list shows whether the photos and video submissions were actually picked up by Snapchat curators.

The simple files aren’t elegantly presented, but suggest Snapchat could give users a more robust view of their activity. And it’s more data than Snapchat shows users on the app itself.

The new feature was tucked into a revised privacy policy Tuesday. Changes to the document hint at potential features and highlight how demands from advertisers are leading Snapchat toward new ways of tracking user behavior.