Face Data Processing

When you use RareCapture's photo-matching feature, we process your facial data to find your photos. This page explains exactly what we collect, how we use it, and the controls you have.

Last updatedJune 2026

Biometric data — your consent matters

Facial embeddings are considered biometric data in many jurisdictions. By checking the consent box during registration, you explicitly allow us to process your selfie for photo-matching at this event.

1. What We Collect

When you register for a RareCapture-powered event and take a selfie, we collect and process the following:

Your selfie photograph (stored as a compressed thumbnail — used for display and as a fallback reference only)
A 512-dimension face embedding — a mathematical vector that numerically represents your facial features; this is what we use for matching
Pose metadata (head yaw/pitch/roll) derived from the selfie — used to improve match quality across angled shots
A label you optionally assign (e.g. "Mom", "Dad") when adding family members — this is plain text, not biometric

We do NOT store a biometric template in the legal sense used by some jurisdictions. The embedding is a floating-point vector that cannot be reverse-engineered back into a photograph of your face.

2. How We Process It

Your selfie is processed on our secure servers using InsightFace (buffalo_l_core model) — an open-source AI library used in research and industry. The pipeline is:

Face detection — we locate and crop your face from the selfie
Embedding extraction — ArcFace converts the face crop into a 512-dimension L2-normalised vector
Quality gate — we reject blurry, low-confidence, or heavily obscured faces to keep accuracy high
Vector search — your embedding is compared against all face embeddings from event photos using a FAISS similarity index
Photo attribution — matched photos are attributed to you (and any family members) based on which person's embedding best fits each photo

Your raw selfie photograph is never used for searching. Only the embedding vector participates in the matching process.

3. Why We Use It

The sole purpose of processing your facial data is to find photographs of you (and family members you add) within the event's photo library and present them in a personal gallery. We use your face data only for:

Matching your selfie against photos in the specific event(s) you join
Rebuilding or refreshing your gallery when you return to an event or add a family member
Providing the "My Events" cross-event history feature if you have visited multiple events

We do not use your facial data for identification outside of events you have explicitly joined, advertising, resale to third parties, or any purpose beyond the photo-matching service described above.

4. Who Can See Your Data

Your face embedding and matched gallery are accessible only to:

You — via the gallery link or My Events page on your verified device
The photography studio that organised the event — they can see your name, email, and the count of matched photos, but not your face embedding or selfie
RareCapture's backend systems — for processing and storage only; no human at RareCapture accesses individual face embeddings in the normal course of operations

Other event guests cannot see your photos or any information about you. Each guest's gallery is isolated and accessible only via a unique, unguessable link.

5. How Long We Keep It

Your facial data is kept for as long as your account is active and you have not requested deletion. Specifically:

Face embeddings and reference photos are stored globally on your account — not per-event — so returning to any future event skips the selfie step
If the photography studio's subscription ends or their account is deleted, all event data (including face embeddings from that studio's events) is permanently deleted via a cascading cleanup
If you delete your face profile via "My Events → Delete my face data", all your embeddings, reference photos, and matched galleries are permanently deleted across every event on the platform

6. Your Rights & Controls

You have full control over your facial data at any time:

Retake your selfie — update your registered face at any event via the retake option in your gallery
Add or remove family members — manage whose faces are linked to your account from within your gallery
Delete your face profile — permanently remove all your face data from the platform via My Events → Privacy → Delete my face data
Opt out entirely — use the "Find photos without saving" option at registration to get a one-time match without creating an account or storing any face data

Deletion is immediate and irreversible. Once deleted, your face data cannot be recovered and you will need to re-register to use the photo-matching feature again.

7. Security & Storage

We apply industry-standard security practices to protect your facial data:

All data is encrypted in transit using TLS 1.2+
Face embeddings are stored in a PostgreSQL database with pgvector extension on a hardened server — the database has no public network exposure
Selfie thumbnails are stored in a private cloud object store (Cloudflare R2) with access-controlled signed URLs
Our server infrastructure is protected by a firewall (UFW), key-only SSH access, and Cloudflare proxied traffic
We do not share facial data with any advertising networks, data brokers, or third parties outside of the core infrastructure providers listed in our Privacy Policy

By registering for an event on RareCapture, you acknowledge you have read this Face Data Processing notice and consent to the processing described. You can withdraw consent at any time by deleting your face profile from My Events.