What Happens to Your Selfie After You Scan It
TIME&SPACE · Stories from the Field
Scanning your face to find your event photos does not create a lasting record of it. Here is exactly what happens to your selfie, and for how long.
What Happens to Your Selfie After You Scan It
In short: Scanning your face to find your event photos does not create a permanent record of your face. The selfie you take is used once, to build a mathematical match for that event's photos, and the image itself is deleted automatically within 30 days. What happens after that depends on whether your scan found anything, and whether you asked to be told about more photos later.
Taking a selfie to find your own photos feels like handing something over. It is worth knowing exactly what that something is, and exactly how long it sticks around.
The selfie itself is temporary
Your selfie is a photo like any other, except it is used for one purpose: building a numerical description of your face that can be compared against the photos from the event you scanned at. That image is deleted automatically, on a schedule, within 30 days of being taken. It is never used for anything other than that one comparison, and it is never shared outside the event you scanned at.
The match, not the photo, is what gets compared
What actually gets compared is not the picture but a descriptor built from it: a string of numbers that captures the geometry of a face, with no name attached. That descriptor is checked against the faces already found in the event's own photos, scoped to that one event only. A match above a set threshold means a photo is yours; anything below it is not.
If your scan finds photos
If your selfie matches photos straight away, that is usually the end of it. Your gallery is built, you download what is yours, and nothing about your face is kept afterward, unless you asked to be notified when more photos are added later, which is the one case covered next.
If your scan finds nothing yet
Not every photo is uploaded before every guest scans. If your selfie finds no matches, the match itself, not the image, is kept for up to 30 days so it can be checked again automatically as more photos from the event are uploaded. If something newly uploaded matches, you are told. After 30 days, that comparison data is deleted whether or not anything was ever found.
If you asked to hear about more photos
If your scan already found photos, and you gave an email address or scanned while signed in and chose to be told when more appear, the same 30 day comparison continues in the background so later uploads can still reach you. Decline that, and nothing about your face is retained once your gallery is delivered.
Who can see any of this
No one, as part of the normal process. Face matching runs automatically, scoped to the single event you scanned at, and no person reviews your selfie or your match data to deliver your gallery. Consent is asked before any of it runs, with a clear checkbox rather than a buried notice, and everything is stored in the EU.
The short version
A selfie at an event finds your photos, then gets out of the way. The image is gone within 30 days regardless of outcome. The match data only sticks around while it still has a job to do, finding new photos or telling you about them, and in every other case there is nothing left to keep.
Founder, TIME&SPACE