Snapchat Snap Map Gets "My Places" To Track You Better

Supposing you wanted Snapchat to do a better job of telling you where you've been and tracking where you're going, you're in luck! There's a feature coming to iOS first (and probably Android second) called Places. You'll find it appearing in Snapchat with the name "My Places", ready to roll with the map system already appearing inside the app: Snap Map.

The Snap Map location-sharing platform tracks users as they visit businesses. Snapchat users can tag places and "Check in" to places, like so many GPS-tracking apps that've attempted this system in the past. Users can also give places ratings and recommend places to friends and the public. The My Places update to Snap Map makes this whole process easy to work with – track your places, recommend places, and so forth.

So it's sort of similar to Loopt, Gowalla, Foursquare (Swarm), Skout, Yelp, Facebook Places, Eventleaf, Google Maps, Tripadvisor, AroundMe, LikeWhere, Citysocializer, Checkie, Glypse, and Zenly. It's also a bit like Find My Friends on iOS devices, and Trusted Contacts on Android devices... and most other devices.

Snap Map attempts to expand the Snapchat check-in, sharing, and rating locations system with Popular, Favorites, and Visited lists of places. If you're looking to try this system in Snapchat on iOS, you can do so by making sure you have the latest version of the app first. Once inside the updated Snapchat app, swipe to the Snap Map and find the new Places button at the bottom of your screen.

And if any of this tracking business worries you at all, be sure to take a peek at SnapLion, the system Snapchat was meant to be using to keep track of data that could potentially be turned over to law enforcement, but was revealed to be used for other purposes. Just remember, so long as your data remains less than end-to-end encrypted, there's a chance someone else can see it.