Your name and address are on data broker sites. Your face is in a database too. Anyone with a photograph of you can use it to find out who you are, where you live, and where you have been online.
In 2024, two Harvard students identified strangers in real time using Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses paired with PimEyes. They looked at someone, the glasses ran the face, and within seconds they had the person's name, address, and social media. Meta plans to launch its "Name Tag" facial recognition feature for smart glasses in 2026. The window for getting your face out of these databases is closing.
The Databases
Clearview AI — 50+ billion scraped images. Sells primarily to law enforcement. Offers opt-out only in states with privacy laws requiring it: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Utah, and Virginia. If you live elsewhere, submit anyway. They sometimes process out-of-state requests.
PimEyes — Public face search engine. Anyone pays a monthly fee, uploads a photo of your face, and gets every indexed page where that face appears. Offers a free opt-out: upload a face photo + anonymized government ID. Processing takes 48-96 hours.
FaceCheck.ID — Searches social media, dating apps, mugshot sites. No public opt-out. The only strategy is removing source photos from the websites where they were found.
Google Lens, Yandex, TinEye — Reverse image search engines. Not dedicated facial recognition, but they find your photos. No opt-out for their indexes.
Clearview AI Opt-Out
Five minutes. Go to clearview.ai/privacy-and-requests. Find your state. Select "Delete My Information." Enter a privacy-dedicated email. Upload a clear front-facing photo. Complete the CAPTCHA. Confirm via email.
If your state is not listed: Submit anyway. Use a general privacy inquiry. No guarantee, but no downside to asking.
The catch: Clearview continuously scrapes the internet. If your photos remain publicly accessible, they will re-index them. Opt-out must be paired with removing source photos. Re-submit every six months.
PimEyes Opt-Out
Go to pimeyes.com/en/opt-out-request-form. Upload a clear face photo. Upload an anonymized government ID (cover name, address, and ID number — only the photo visible). Submit.
Critical: Submit multiple times with different photos. PimEyes matches against the specific photo you upload. A single photo will not catch every indexed image. Use 3-5 different photos, different angles, spaced a few days apart.
PimEyes opt-out removes your face from PimEyes results. It does not remove the original photos from the websites where they were found. One layer, not a complete solution.
When You Cannot Opt Out
For FaceCheck.ID and reverse image search engines, the strategy shifts from opting out of the database to removing the source material.
Audit first. Run your face through PimEyes (before opting out), FaceCheck.ID, Google Lens, Yandex, and TinEye. Document every URL.
Remove what you control. Set social media to private. Remove or replace your LinkedIn photo (always public). Delete old public Facebook albums. Remove yourself from your employer's team page.
Request removal from what you do not control. Contact site owners. File DMCA takedowns if you own the copyright. Submit opt-outs through data broker standard processes.
Strip EXIF metadata from every photo before uploading anywhere. GPS coordinates, timestamps, and camera data help facial recognition systems link photos to identities. ExifTool (desktop), Metapho (iOS), Photo Exif Editor (Android).
Why This Matters Now
Clearview grew from 3 billion images in 2020 to over 50 billion in 2025. A 16x increase in five years. Meta is building facial recognition into consumer smart glasses. Law enforcement use doubled between 2022 and 2023.
50 billion images. Six states with opt-out rights. The rest of America has no legal mechanism to get their face out of these systems.
If you want your face removed, you do it yourself. Proactively. Using the opt-outs that exist, and reducing the source material that feeds these systems. It is not a perfect solution. It is the only one available.
What It Comes Down To
Dark Scrub runs your face through five independent methods — PimEyes, FaceCheck.ID, Google Lens, Yandex, and TinEye. We document every URL, submit opt-outs to Clearview and PimEyes on your behalf, and deliver a report with findings categorized by risk level.
No automated privacy service offers facial recognition auditing. We built Dark Scrub to provide it. The Photo Exposure Audit is included in Full Dark and Ghost Protocol, or available standalone for $129.
— J. Daniel, Dark Scrub