Why Is Hinge Asking for a Face Scan?

That scan is Face Check, a required video selfie that Hinge uses in regions where local rules permit it. It confirms that you are a real, live person, estimates your age, checks your photos and looks for other accounts using your likeness. If your photos include a clear solo shot of your face that matches the selfie, you get the Selfie Verified badge automatically.

Face Check is a short video of your face, recorded inside the app. It is not a photo you pick from your camera roll, and that is the point. A live video is far harder to fake than a still image.

Hinge uses it for four jobs. It confirms that a real, live person is holding the phone. It estimates your age. It checks the photos on your page against your face. And it looks for other accounts using your likeness, which is how stolen photos and copied accounts get caught.

The scan is required, but not everywhere. Hinge applies it region by region, in places where local rules allow it. That is why a friend in another country may never have seen it while you cannot get past it.

There are two usual reasons.

The first is simply where you are. If you live in a region where Hinge requires Face Check, the app will ask you to complete it.

The second catches men who travel. Hinge says that changing the location on your account to a region where Face Check is required can also trigger the scan. So a man who lands in a new city for work and updates his location there can be asked for a face scan he never saw at home.

Hinge describes the scan as a requirement of the region, not a response to anything you did. Every man in the same place gets the same request.

Checking your photos means comparing the face in your video with the faces on your page. That comparison only works if your page gives it a face to compare.

This is where a lot of photo sets fall apart. Sunglasses in the first photo. A group shot where nobody could say which man is you. A picture taken from across the room, where your face is a few pixels wide. A heavy filter that smooths away half of what you look like.

a dating coach tells men to cut exactly those photos. His advice is to have at least one or two where your face is well lit, well framed and at its physical best. He will not even wear sunglasses when he is out talking to women, because they hide his expressions. The photos that leave a woman unsure what you look like are the same ones that leave the scan with nothing to match.

Pass the scan with a clear solo photo of your face on your page, one that matches the selfie, and Hinge gives you the Selfie Verified badge automatically. There is no separate step to go looking for.

That badge is worth having. A woman deciding whether to answer your like has a quiet question in the back of her mind: does this man actually look like his photos? The badge answers it before she has to ask. The badge does not make a woman want you. It takes one small doubt out of her way.

It is easy to treat the scan as one more hoop. Look at it from the app's side instead.

a dating coach's view of the dating apps is blunt. They are businesses, and above everything they want to keep women on the app, because the men follow the women. Fake accounts, stolen photos and men lying about their age are exactly the things that drive women away. A check that screens those out makes every real man in her feed easier to trust.

If your photos are recent and honest, that is good news for you. You stand in a cleaner lineup, with a badge that says so. The men who lose out are the ones whose photos are five years old or edited into someone else. They were going to lose her at the first date anyway, the moment she saw the gap.

Hinge's tips for the scan are short. Make sure your face is well lit and fully visible. Take off sunglasses, hats and anything else covering your face. Keep a neutral expression. Leave group shots and altered or filtered photos off your page. If the scan goes wrong, exit it and start again.

Do it properly, because until you pass, Hinge holds back much of the app. You cannot use Discover or send likes, and many core features stay off limits.

So pick your moment. Do it at home in daylight, facing a window, with your hair out of your face. Do not do it in a dim bar on a Friday night with a date waiting. Then take one more look at your first photo. If it is not a clear, solo, well lit shot of your face, replace it. The scan needs that photo, and so does every woman who opens your page.