Do You Have to Redo Face Check if You Come Back to Tinder?

Only if you have been away more than 30 days. Where Face Check is required, Tinder says you can skip it if you sign up again with your previous credentials within 30 days of deleting your account. It uses your stored Verification Data instead. After 30 days you will be asked to do it again, because that data is deleted within 30 days of closing your account.

Face Check leaves Tinder holding what it calls Verification Data. When you close your account, Tinder says that data is deleted within 30 days.

So the rule follows from what is still on file. Come back inside the 30 days and your Verification Data is still there, so Tinder uses it and you skip the step. Come back after that and there is nothing left to reuse, so you go through Face Check as if for the first time.

Tinder frames all of this with one condition: where Face Check is required. It is not asked for everywhere.

If you live somewhere Tinder does not require Face Check, the 30-day question may never come up for you. If you do live somewhere it is required, or you are returning while you are somewhere it is required, the clock above is the one that matters.

The 30-day shortcut depends on signing up again with your previous credentials, meaning the same login details you used on the old account. That is what connects the new sign-up to the Verification Data Tinder still holds.

Sign up with a different email or phone number and, as far as Tinder can tell, you are a new member. Where Face Check is required, expect to be asked for it.

Men mix up two separate deadlines here, and they do not match.

• The 30-day clock is for Face Check. It decides whether you have to verify your face again.
• The 90-day clock is for restoring your account. Tinder says that if you deleted within the last 90 days, signing up with your previous credentials can restore some information, such as your name, age and gender. Tinder calls that restore a test, running only in select markets.

Put together, the timeline looks like this:

• Back within 30 days. No Face Check, and you may be able to restore some basic details.
• Back between 30 and 90 days. Face Check again, and you may still be able to restore some basic details.
• Back after 90 days. Face Check again where it is required, and a new account built from nothing.

Neither clock promises the return of your photos, your matches or your conversations. Tinder names basic details only.

If you are reading this before you leave rather than after, there is a simpler route. Keep the account.

Go into Settings and switch Enable Discovery off. Your card is no longer shown to new people, and the account is left untouched, existing matches and chats included. When you are ready, switch the toggle back on. Nothing was deleted, so there is no Face Check to repeat and nothing to restore.

Deleting makes sense when you are certain: a woman has your full attention, or you are done with the apps altogether. For a rest, hiding does the job without any of the deadlines.

Face Check is the smallest part of a return. What decides how the next month goes is what women see when you reappear.

If the old account was getting little back, do not return with the same set. Have someone photograph you outdoors in natural light, with a couple of changes of clothes and scenery, and put the sharpest picture of your face at the front. Then rework the first lines she reads so they carry one concrete thing about your life, something she can see in her head and ask you about.

Then come back at a steady pace. A short session on most days, liking women you would actually take out, beats a two-hour binge on your first night. When a match turns up, answer it the same day, and start with a question about her rather than a hello. Once she is plainly enjoying the chat, propose a night out. A returning account gets judged the same way as any other, on whether the man behind it is worth a drink.