Privacy Policy

The short version

Faciey only works on people who switched it on. Discoverability is off when you create an account, and nobody can find you by face until you turn it on yourself.

We store a mathematical representation of your face so that matching is possible. You can turn discovery off, hide individual scans, or delete your face and your account entirely, at any time, from inside the app.

We do not sell your data. We do not share your face data with advertisers.

What we collect

• Account details: your email address, username, display name, bio and avatar.
• Sign-in identifiers, if you use Google or Apple to sign in.
• Face data: the photos you submit during verification, and the numerical embeddings derived from them.
• Scans you run: the images or video frames you submit, the faces detected in them, and the matches returned.
• Activity: profile views, scan counts, connections, messages and notification history.
• Device tokens, so we can send you push notifications.

Face data, specifically

When you verify your face, the images are sent to our face-processing service, which converts each one into an embedding: a list of numbers describing the geometry of the face. Matching compares embeddings, not photographs.

An embedding cannot be turned back into a photograph of you. It is still personal data, and in several jurisdictions it is biometric data, so we treat it that way.

Your embedding is only compared against a scan when your discoverability switch is on. Turning it off removes you from matching immediately.

Why we are allowed to hold it

For face data we rely on your explicit consent, which you give by completing face verification and by switching discoverability on. You can withdraw that consent at any time by switching it off or deleting your face.

For everything else we rely on performing the service you asked for, and on our legitimate interest in keeping the service safe and working.

Who we share it with

We use a small number of processors to run the service. They act on our instructions and may not use your data for their own purposes.

• Cloud storage providers, for the images you upload.
• Our face-processing service, which generates and compares embeddings.
• Google and Apple, if you choose to sign in with them.
• Firebase Cloud Messaging, to deliver push notifications.
• Our email provider, to send verification and notification emails.

We do not sell personal data, and we do not share face data with advertisers or data brokers.

What other people can see

When somebody scans a face and it matches yours, they see what you chose to publish: your display name, username, avatar, bio and the links you added. They see a confidence score for the match.

They do not see your email address, your other scans, or anything you did not add to your profile.

You are told every time your face turns up in somebody else’s scan.

How long we keep it

We keep your account data for as long as your account exists. Delete your account and we remove your profile, your face data, your embeddings, your scan history, your messages and your connections within 30 days.

You can also delete your face on its own and keep the account, which removes you from matching without losing your links.

Your rights

• Switch discoverability off, which stops all matching against your face.
• Hide yourself from a single scan without changing your overall setting.
• Delete your face data, your content or your entire account.
• Ask for a copy of the data we hold about you.
• Ask us to correct anything that is wrong.
• Object to how we are using your data, or complain to your local data protection authority.

Children

Faciey is not for under-18s. We do not knowingly create accounts for children, and we remove them when we find them. If you believe a child has an account, tell us and we will act.

Changes

If we change this policy in a way that affects how your face data is used, we will tell you in the app before the change takes effect.