Events · 5 min read · Savina Bansal
Face search at a wedding: consent, retention and deletion
A selfie is personal data. What a guest agrees to in Ohanvi’s Events module, how long the selfie is kept, and how a guest deletes it or stops the messages.
Building the platform this article is about
Face search is the useful part of an event gallery: a guest takes a selfie and sees the photos they are in, instead of scrolling through thousands. It also asks a guest for something personal. A studio that uses it should be able to say, plainly, what happens to that selfie.
Here is what Ohanvi’s Events module does, control by control.
The guest agrees first, in one sentence
Before the selfie, the guest ticks a box that reads, with your studio’s name in it: “[Studio] may use my selfie only to find my photos at this event. It is deleted after [N] days.” No tick, no selfie. The number of days is the one you set for the event.
You choose how long the selfie is kept
Selfie retention is a per-event setting: 7, 30 or 90 days. After that the selfie is deleted. The guest keeps the photos they were found in; only the selfie goes.
Pick the shortest that works. A one-evening party needs a week. A three-day wedding where photos are still being uploaded a fortnight later needs a month.
The guest can leave whenever they like
The gallery menu has two choices. “Stop WhatsApp messages” ends the alerts for that event; the photos stay on the page. “Delete my selfie and data” removes their selfie, their face match and their place in the gallery. They can verify again later if they change their mind.
Guests who stopped messages show as Stopped on the Guests tab, so the studio does not message them by other means about it either.
Not everyone has to give a number
The standard Guest link asks for a WhatsApp number so photos can be sent. The VIP link asks for a selfie only, for parents and elders who would rather not. A PIN link replaces the number check with a PIN. And an event can be set to “Anyone with the link”, which asks for nothing and does no face search for the visitor at all.
Inside the studio
If your team works with hidden phone numbers, the Guests tab respects that: a role that never sees customer numbers sees a masked token instead of the guest’s number.
A photo you delete leaves the event and is removed from the face index too, so it stops matching anyone’s selfie.
Tell guests at the venue
Put one line on the QR card: “Scan, take a selfie, and we send you the photos you are in. Your selfie is deleted after 30 days.” Guests who understand what they are agreeing to are the ones who scan.
Keep reading
Questions this answers
- How long are guest selfies kept for event face search?
- In Ohanvi’s Events module, the studio sets it per event: 7, 30 or 90 days. The guest sees that period in the consent line before they take the selfie, and can delete it sooner from the gallery menu.
- Can a guest delete their selfie from an event gallery?
- Yes. “Delete my selfie and data” in the gallery menu removes the selfie, the face match and their place in the gallery. They can verify again later if they want to.
