Match Group extends FaceTec liveness to Hinge, adds age verification for UK, Oz users

Online dating application Hinge now requires new and existing users in the UK and Australia to undergo facial age estimation (FAE) to comply with the UK’s Online Safety Act and Australia’s Social Media Minimum Age Act, and biometric liveness detection from FaceTec for all users around the world.

Hinge is part of Match Group, which also owns Tinder, Match.com, Meetic, OkCupid, Plenty of Fish, Azar, and other online dating apps. In October of last year, Match Group made face liveness verification mandatory for U.S. Tinder users, and announced it would integrate mandatory facial verification directly into the onboarding experience to other dating apps in its portfolio in early 2026.

Match Group has been using selfie biometrics to improve user security since 2020.

A blog from the company says Hinge’s scheme will need “at least one clear photo that shows your face” from every user. “This helps us confirm that you meet the minimum age requirement to use Hinge.”

For U.S.-based Hinge users, it is already mandatory to provide a facial image for selfie verification and liveness detection using the Face Check system. Per its Help Center, “users complete a biometric Face Check scan with a video selfie in order to help make Hinge a more authentic place.”

“We use facial scanning technology to check that the video was taken of a real, live person, and that it was not digitally altered or manipulated,” Hinge says. “This technology also detects your face in your video selfie and your profile photos, and uses your facial geometry (‘FaceMap’) to generate a unique number (‘FaceVector’).”

The biometric checks also scan for duplicate faces among profile images, and users who complete the process receive a “Selfie Verified” badge.

Hinge addresses data retention in its privacy policy, noting that: “We keep your age estimate and three audit images from your video selfie for the purposes of managing Face Check, certain compliance obligations, and confirming your likeness. We may also use your age estimate and audit images to train select machine learning models that power our trust and safety tools, as well as to test and audit such models and tools.”

The same goes for selfies provided for age estimation in the UK. “Once the check is complete, your photo will be kept for up to three months for the purpose of the age check. Thereafter, your hashed age check photo and age assurance results are kept for one year.”

While the retention schedule leaves itself open to accusations it could lead to a harmful data breach, the scenario becomes less urgent in the context of a dating site, which already hosts facial photographs of its users as a matter of course.

Using users data to train machine learning networks, however, would not seem to be a requirement of a successful dating site.

FaceTec’s inroads with face liveness and age assurance in the dating sector include partnerships with Grindr and Meet Group.

Article Topics

age verification  |  biometric liveness detection  |  biometrics  |  face biometrics  |  FaceTec  |  facial age estimation (FAE)  |  Hinge  |  selfie biometrics  |  Tinder