What Is Face Check on Tinder?

Face Check is Tinder's biometric scan, done with a short video selfie. It checks that the video shows a real, live person and was not digitally altered. Your facial geometry is then used to check your face against the pictures on your account. It also helps cut down on fraud and makes sure no other account is using your likeness. Finally, it captures two still images from the video, and automated technology studies those to estimate whether you are 18 or over.

Tinder describes Face Check as doing three jobs at once.

1. You are real. Facial scanning technology checks that the video was taken of a real, live person and has not been digitally altered. In plain terms, it wants a live man in front of the lens and a video nobody has edited.
2. You match your pictures. Your facial geometry is used to check the pictures on your account, so the face in the video and the face in your photos have to belong to the same man.
3. You are an adult. Face Check captures two audit images from the video selfie. Automated technology analyzes them to estimate whether you are 18 or over.

That third job is why Tinder groups Face Check with its age checks. It is an age estimate from your face, done in the same step as confirming you are who your pictures say.

Tinder's help page names Australia, Brazil and the UK as places where people creating an account are asked for Face Check. If you are signing up somewhere else, you may never see it.

Travel can change that. Tinder asks for Face Check when you use Passport Mode in a location where it is required, so a man who never needed it at home can meet it on a trip.

Tinder says your facial geometry is used and stored for the purposes above. It is used to check your pictures, to reduce fraud, and to make sure no other account is using your face.

That last point works in your favor. If someone lifted your pictures to build a fake account, stored facial geometry is part of how Tinder can spot a second account wearing your face.

Face Check is a video of your face, so treat it like a passport photo at an airport.

• Face a window or a lamp, so your face is lit from the front.
• Take off sunglasses, and push back a cap or hood that hides your eyes or forehead.
• Hold the phone at face height and keep your face inside the frame.
• Follow the on-screen prompts, and move when it asks you to.

It takes a minute. Rushing it in a dark room is the easiest way to make it take three.

Most men see Face Check as a hurdle. It is closer to an advantage.

Women on dating apps are wary of fake accounts and of men who look nothing like their photos. a dating coach makes the point from the other side: when a woman's pictures are flattering, she probably looks more like the least flattering one. Women apply the same suspicion to men. A face that has been checked against your pictures takes one worry off the table before you have said a word.

Face Check compares your face with your pictures. That is a good reason to ask whether your pictures look like you today.

Plenty of men lead with a shot from five years and fifteen pounds ago, or one filtered until the skin looks plastic. Those set up a first date where she spends the opening minute checking whether you are the same man. Use recent pictures in natural light, with your face clear, and put the sharpest one first.

Then do the rest well. Answer a new match the same day with a question about something in her pictures. "That concert in your fourth picture looks packed. Who were you seeing?" is the kind of line that gets a real answer. Keep the chat light, and when she is clearly enjoying it, suggest a place and a day. If there is any doubt on either side, a dating coach's habit of a quick phone or video call before meeting settles it fast.