FaceCheck.ID Removal: How to Get Off the Face-Search Engine Nobody's Talking About

FaceCheck.ID launched in 2022. It indexes 100M+ faces. It markets itself as a tool for "verifying online dating matches" and "investigating scammers" — the same framing PimEyes used in 2017 before regulators noticed.

Most people who care about face privacy have never heard of it. The opt-out is real, just buried. Here's how to find it and what to expect.

What FaceCheck.ID Actually Is

FaceCheck.ID is a public face-search engine. You upload a photo, it searches its index, and returns URLs where matching faces appear. Free tier shows blurred results. Paid tier ($1.99/day, $30+/month) returns full URLs.

Their stated coverage emphasizes "scam profiles, dating sites, social media" — but the index includes news photos, professional headshots, and general public web photos like every other engine in this category.

The threat model is identical to PimEyes: anyone with a credit card and a photo of you can find pages where your face appears. Cost of entry is lower (their free tier returns more useful information than PimEyes' free tier).

Why It Matters Even If You've Never Heard of It

Face-search engines benefit from press obscurity. The less attention they get, the less regulatory pressure they face, and the more aggressively they can index. FaceCheck.ID has had almost no coverage in mainstream tech press despite being a credible PimEyes competitor for three years.

That obscurity also affects removal. People who opt out of PimEyes typically don't think to file with FaceCheck.ID. Their face stays indexed there even after PimEyes de-lists them.

For complete face removal, you have to file with each engine independently. FaceCheck.ID is one of the ones most people skip.

The Opt-Out Process

1. Go to facecheck.id/opt-out directly. Their navigation doesn't link to this page from the homepage; you have to know the URL.
2. Read the legal disclaimers. They state explicitly that opt-out requires verification of identity and is processed at their discretion outside of jurisdictions with binding privacy law.
3. Fill the form (details below). One submission per face.
4. Confirm via the email they send. Unconfirmed submissions are auto-discarded.
5. Wait. Most decisions come back within two to four weeks. They notify by email.

What the Form Asks (And How to Answer)

Reference photo

Same as PimEyes. Recent, front-facing, clear, unobstructed. Their matching model evaluates this against candidate matches in their index. Low-confidence matches get rejected.

Government ID

Required for verification. They accept driver's license, passport, or national ID. You can redact ID number, address, date of birth — but the name and the photo on the ID must be visible. They state the ID is deleted after processing; same trust question as every other engine.

Email and country

Use a real email. Country determines which legal framework you can cite.

Reason for removal

Their form has a free-text field. The most-processed reasons in our experience:

• EU/UK: "Article 17 GDPR (right to erasure). I am exercising my right to have biometric data identifying me deleted."
• California: "California Consumer Privacy Act §1798.105. I am exercising my right to delete my personal information including biometric data."
• Illinois: "Biometric Information Privacy Act, 740 ILCS 14. I am exercising my right to control the use of my biometric identifiers."
• Other US: "I am exercising my right to control the use of my biometric data and request removal from your index."

"I don't want to be on this site" gets ignored. Specific statutory language gets processed.

After You Submit

FaceCheck.ID typically responds within 2-4 weeks. Approval looks like an automated email confirming removal — usually with no further detail about which URLs were de-listed. Rejections include a reason code.

Same caveat as every face-search engine: approval means de-listing from their index, not deletion of source photos. The original sites still host your face. FaceCheck.ID just stops returning them when someone reverse-searches.

And same caveat as monthly cadence: they re-index. New photos of you that appear after the opt-out get added. The opt-out covers what was indexed at the time of the request, not what gets indexed next.

What This Doesn't Cover

Filing with FaceCheck.ID handles FaceCheck.ID. It doesn't handle PimEyes, Precheck.ai, Clearview AI, Lenso.ai, Yandex, or the other 7+ public face-search engines. Each has its own form, own legal basis requirements, own response times, own quirks.

That's the reason face removal is a category of service rather than a one-time task. It's about a dozen separate forms, monthly, against engines that re-index continuously.