Privacy Policy
Last updated October 18, 2026
The short version: your full photo never leaves your device, we don’t create face templates, and the face crop you searched and your results disappear after 48 hours.
Your photo
The face detection happens on your device. Only a crop around the face is sent, over an encrypted connection, to our face search provider to run your search. We keep that crop alongside your results for 48 hours so your report can show which face was searched, then delete it automatically. Your full photo is never uploaded, and we don’t create or keep face templates. Between choosing your photo and paying, the crop stays in your browser only, for up to 24 hours, so a page reload during payment doesn’t lose it; “Discard this photo” deletes it.
What we do keep
- Your email: it identifies your account and is where we send your sign-in code, receipts and search results, plus, for a free preview run before 27 October 2026, at most one reminder before it expired and, if you didn’t unlock it, one email afterwards asking why (each has a link to turn these emails off). If you answer, we keep your answer and any comment with that search record.
- Search records: a one-way hash of the photo (not the photo), a hashed IP address, the match count and timestamps. We use these to prevent abuse and to give your credit back if a search finds nothing.
- Results and the searched face crop: stored for 48 hours at a private link, then deleted automatically. The small images of matching faces a preview showed (before 27 October 2026) are deleted at the same time.
- Sign-in sessions: kept until they expire (up to 180 days) or you sign out.
- Payments: handled by Stripe. We never see your card number; we keep only the confirmation that you paid.
Who we share it with
- The face search provider, which receives the face crop to run the search and has its own policy.
- Stripe, for payments.
- PostHog (product analytics, in the US), as described under Cookies and analytics below.
- Our hosting, email delivery, bot-protection and error-monitoring providers, so the service runs.
We don’t sell your data and we don’t use it for advertising.
Removing your face from results
Because we don’t hold any face data, we can’t remove a face from search results ourselves. Matches come from a third-party provider’s index of public web pages. To get a face out of the results, ask the websites that host the image to take it down, and use the opt-out offered by the search provider. Email us and we’ll point you to the right place.
Your rights
You can ask to see or delete the data we hold about you (your email and search records) at any time. Under Canadian privacy law (PIPEDA) and equivalent laws elsewhere you may also withdraw consent and lodge a complaint with your privacy regulator.
Cookies and analytics
We use one cookie to keep you signed in and one to remember your answer to the cookie question. Both are needed for the site to work. No advertising cookies. Cloudflare Web Analytics counts page views and loading speed without cookies or identifiers.
With your permission, we also set an analytics cookie (sf_vid, a random id kept for a year) and send usage events to PostHog, in the US, through our own domain: the page you arrived on, which buttons you tapped, the plan you picked, your device type and country. We record replays of how pages are used (taps, scrolling, which screen you reached), with everything you type hidden and photos, faces, results and the payment form blocked out entirely. Events never include your photos, your results, your IP address or your email. Once you run a search or sign in, your visits are linked to a pseudonymous id made from a salted hash of your email (not the email itself), so we can see whether people who search come back and buy. We may also show you one of two versions of a page to see which works better.
In the EU, EEA, UK and Switzerland we ask first, and nothing is sent from your browser until you say yes. Elsewhere it is on by default. Anywhere, you can say no or change your answer at any time with “Cookie settings” at the bottom of every page, and we honor Global Privacy Control as a no. Saying no doesn’t change anything else on the site.
Separately, our server records what happens to searches, emails and payments (for example “a search found matches”, “a reminder was sent”, “a payment succeeded”) under the same pseudonymous id, to run and improve the service (our legitimate interest). These records have no photos, results or email addresses, and you can ask us to delete them.
Children
socialfinder is for adults. We don’t knowingly process photos of minors or data from anyone under 18.
Changes
We’ll update this page and its date if our practices change.