4 Reasons Random People Add You on Snapchat (+ Quick Fixes)

Do random and weird accounts keep adding you on Snapchat? This happens way more often than you think, but fortunately, it has a few easy fixes.

The random people who add you on Snapchat are almost always bots, scammers, and adult content marketers. They usually add you through the Quick Add feature, phone number, or find accounts on Snapchat search. To stop this, deactivate Quick Add, change your username and deactivate phone number search.

Why do they keep adding you?

99% of the random people who add you on Snapchat are bots, scammers, OnlyFans promoters, or other adult content sellers. This isn’t just limited to Snapchat however. Every major social media site suffers from this problem.

Snapchat actively bans these bots and scammers since they ruin the experience of using Snapchat.

Unfortunately, since Snapchat is free, they can just make a new account right away.

The people behind these scams and bots will keep on doing this for the simple reason that it’s profitable for them.

Very few users actually fall for these Snapchat scams, so the scammers have to target thousands of users just to get one or two unlucky victims.

However, those few victims bring them sufficient money to fund their illegal operations. Because of this, the process continues.

The most common scams on Snapchat are:

• Phishing: scammer sends you a link that automatically downloads a virus to your device.
• Credit card scams: the scammer tries to get your Credit card data, usually through fake shopping links.
• ID scams: usually, they’ll try to sign you up for an adult content site and pretend they need your ID for it. They’ll then use your ID to commit identity theft and fraud.
• Pretending to be a friend who needs money.
• Romance scams: in this case, they prey on lonely men and women and try to extract money from them.
• Get rich quick schemes: similar to the Nigerian phishing scam, where they promise to give you a million dollars if you first give them $500 to pay  processing fees.

However, not all random people who add you on Snapchat are scammers. Some are more innocent in the sense that they aren’t actually breaking any laws, but their activities still break Snapchat’s Terms of Service:

• OnlyFans or other adult content promoters: sometimes these are real people who add people in bulk in the hopes of getting 1-2 paying OnlyFans subscribers.
• Buying & selling fake accounts: every major social media platform, including Snapchat, has a thriving black market where people buy and sell accounts for various reasons.
• Creating a web of contacts: Snapchat has a feature called Quick Add, where you can add “a friend of a friend” instead of directly adding a friend. When a bot or scammer adds you on Snapchat, they expand their web of “friends of friends,” which they can then Quick Add.

So this is pretty much why random people keep adding you on Snapchat. The next question is: how do these scammers find your Snapchat account?

How do random people keep finding you? 

There are a number of ways scammers and bots can find you and add you to their list:

The Quick Add feature

This is perhaps the most common way Snapchat bots and scammers find victims. 

The Quick Add feature populates its list with the friends of people you’ve already added on Snapchat. 

Thus, unless you take some steps to make your Snapchat account more private and secure, there is a high chance scammers and bots will find you through the Quick Add feature.

Through your phone number 

If you’re like most people, you’ve probably signed up for 1-2 eCommerce sites using your phone number.

Sometimes these sites suffer data breaches and leak millions of emails, phone numbers, and passwords.

Scammers and botters usually purchase this sort of information to create gigantic lists of millions of people they can spam with scam campaigns.

When it comes to Snapchat, a scammer can then load up thousands of phone numbers (including yours) on their phones, create a new Snapchat account, and voila. 

Snapchat sees your phone number in their contact list, assumes the two of you are friends, and allows the scammer or botter to add you as a friend in Snapchat.

Your Snapchat account was scraped from other sites

Have you ever shared your Snapchat account on Instagram, Facebook, or dating sites?

If the answer is yes, then there’s a high chance the account was scraped, added to a database, and then sold to Snapchat scammers and spammers.

Your account name is too easy to search for

If your Snapchat username uses common words or names, then it’s possible spammers are using Snapchat’s search function to uncover hundreds, maybe thousands, of Snapchat accounts.

How to stop friend invites from random people on Snapchat

Fortunately, there are ways to stop all these spammy friend invites on Snapchat. 

They probably won’t stop 100% of these invites, but if you follow all the recommendations, you should get an 80-90% reduction in spammy invites.

Turn off the Quick Add feature

The most impactful change you can make is to simply turn off the “Quick Add” feature.

Doing so will make your account disappear from other Snapchat users Quick Add lists, such as the one below.

Fortunately, the Quick Add setting won’t affect any essential features of Snapchat, such as messaging, score streaks, etc.

To deactivate the Quick Add feature, simply follow these steps:

1. Open your Snapchat profile.
2. In the top right, click the Settings button (should look like a gear).
3. Scroll down to Privacy Controls.
4. Click “See Me in Quick Add”.
5. Disable “Show me in Quick Add”.

Protect your phone number

As mentioned previously, there is a chance random people are adding you through your phone number.

To stop them from doing this, do the following:

1. Open your Snapchat profile.
2. In the top right, click the Settings button (should look like a gear).
3. Tap on “Mobile Number”.
4. Deactivate “Let others find me using my mobile number”

After you deactivate this, other Snapchat users won’t be able to add you through a phone number, and will instead have to use a link or your exact username.

Change your Snapchat username

If you think your Snapchat username is too easy to search for and find, then consider changing it.

Changing your username won’t affect your account in any way. All your contacts, score streaks, and conversations will remain intact.

The only thing that will change is that others will have to use your new username to find you.

Do keep in mind, however, that you can only change your username once a year.

Here are the steps required to change your Snapchat username:

1. Open your Snapchat profile.
2. In the top right, click the Settings button (should look like a gear).
3. Tap on “Username”.
4. Tap on “Change Username”

Now choose a distinctive username that doesn’t use common words or names that spammers and scammers usually type in Snapchat’s search function.

Stop linking your Snapchat account on social media

Finally, remove links to your Snapchat account from other social media sites, such as Instagram or Tinder descriptions.

Doing so will prevent strangers from knowing what your Snapchat username is and will also stop bots and scrappers from finding it.

If you think your Snapchat account is already present in many scammer databases, then consider changing your username too. 

This should effectively remove your account from the databases of scammers and spammers, since they’ll keep adding your old username instead of the new one.