HiFriends Privacy Policy

Last Updated: August 5, 2026

Quick Summary

What HiFriends Does:

Uses face recognition to automatically deliver photos to the people in them
Can scan recent photos in your camera roll, on your device, to find ones with you or your friends in them (Scan & Deliver)
Lets you delete any photo of yourself from everywhere on HiFriends
Never sells your data

What We Need:

Your face data, so we can recognize you in photos
Basic account info (name, email, username)
Permission to access your camera and, if you turn on Scan & Deliver, your photo library
You must be 13+ to use HiFriends

Your Rights:

Delete any photo of yourself anytime
Delete your entire account anytime
Block any user anytime
Request a copy of all your data

1. Introduction

Welcome to HiFriends! This Privacy Policy explains how HiFriends Inc. (“we,” “us”) handles your information when you use our app.

HiFriends uses face recognition to deliver photos to the people in them. Because the people in a photo are not always the person who took it, you may receive photos taken by other HiFriends users — and photos you take may be delivered to other users — including people you don’t personally know but who are on HiFriends. Section 13 explains the consent this involves.

By using HiFriends, you agree to this policy. If you don’t agree, please don’t use the app.

2. Information We Collect

Account Information

Name, email, username, password
Your date of birth. HiFriends is for people aged 13 and over, and we ask for your date of birth to confirm that. We keep it with your account.
The IP address your account was created from. We record this once, at signup, as a record of the consent you gave when you created your account. We don’t use it to track you.

Face Recognition and Biometric Data

To deliver photos to you, HiFriends uses face recognition. This section explains what we collect, why, how long we keep it, and your rights. We apply these terms to all users, regardless of where you live.

What we collect and why. When you create your account, you provide enrollment photos. From those photos, HiFriends creates a face template — a mathematical representation of your facial geometry. We use your face template to recognize you in photos, including photos other people take, so those photos can be delivered to you. To keep recognition accurate, your face template may be refined over time, subject to quality limits, from photos other HiFriends users capture of you; all of this data carries the same protections and is destroyed the same way. Your face template is used for one purpose only — recognizing you so that photos can be delivered to you — and for nothing else.

Service providers. We use a third-party service provider, Amazon Web Services (Amazon Rekognition), to create and match face templates on our behalf, solely to provide HiFriends to you. Our service providers may only use your biometric data to provide the service and must keep it secure; they may not use it for their own purposes.

How long we keep it, and how it’s destroyed. We store your face template while your account is active. If you delete your account, we permanently destroy your face template right away. In all cases, we permanently destroy your face template when the purpose for collecting it has been satisfied, or within 24 months of your last interaction with HiFriends, whichever comes first.

We never sell it. We do not sell, lease, trade, or otherwise profit from your biometric data.

When we disclose it. We do not disclose, redisclose, or otherwise disseminate your biometric data except: (1) with your consent; (2) to the service providers described above, to provide HiFriends to you; (3) to complete a financial transaction you request or authorize; or (4) when required by law, or by a valid warrant or subpoena.

Security. We protect your biometric data using a reasonable standard of care, and in a manner at least as protective as the way we store and transmit other confidential and sensitive information.

Your consent and choices. We create your face template only after you provide your consent during sign-up. Because recognizing you in photos is core to how HiFriends works, this consent is required to create an account. You can have your face template permanently deleted at any time by deleting your account.

Camera Roll Access (Scan & Deliver)

If you turn on Scan & Deliver, HiFriends scans recent photos in your camera roll, on your device, to find ones with you or your friends in them. Detecting faces happens on your phone. To identify whether a detected face belongs to you or to one of your friends, face images are sent to HiFriends to be matched, and are not kept afterward. Only photos where you or a friend are identified are uploaded — a photo of a friend is delivered to them, and a photo of you is delivered to you. Apart from that, nothing else from your camera roll leaves your device — not your other photos, your albums, or your filenames.

Scan & Deliver is optional. You control photo-library access through your device’s settings, and you can turn it off at any time.

Photos

Photos you take
Photos you receive
Photos you publish to your profile
You can save photos you’re in to your device
HiFriends does not prevent or notify you of screenshots. Photos shared on any platform can be captured this way. Our cascade delete removes photos from HiFriends but cannot affect screenshots or copies already saved outside the app.

Device & Notification Information

Device type, operating system, and app version
A push notification token — an identifier your device provides so we can send you notifications. We collect this only if you enable notifications, and we use it only to deliver them.

Crash & Diagnostic Data

To keep HiFriends working reliably, we use Sentry, a third-party crash and diagnostics service. When the app crashes or behaves unexpectedly, Sentry receives technical information about what happened. To help us reproduce and fix problems, Sentry also records a small sample of app sessions — and a larger share of sessions where an error occurs — which can include recordings of the screens you viewed within HiFriends. Sentry may also receive your device’s IP address. We use this information only to diagnose and fix bugs, not to build a profile of you.

Background Uploads

To make sure your photos finish uploading even if you close the app or briefly lose your connection, an upload you’ve already started may continue in the background after you leave HiFriends. This happens only to complete a transfer reliably.

Basic Usage Info

How you use the app
Performance data
Device type and app version

Face Recognition Technology

Accuracy Notice:

Face recognition is not 100% accurate
Sometimes photos may be delivered to the wrong people (false positives)
Sometimes photos may not be delivered to the right people (false negatives)
Accuracy improves as you use the app

3. How We Use Your Information

Core Features

Recognize you in photos and deliver them to you
Find you and your friends in recent camera-roll photos, on your device, if you turn on Scan & Deliver, and deliver matching photos to whoever is in them
Let you delete photos of yourself from everywhere on HiFriends
Manage your account and keep it secure

Improvements

Make face recognition more accurate over time
Fix bugs and improve performance using crash and diagnostic data
Understand how people use HiFriends, through analytics

Communication

Push notifications about new photos delivered to you (you can disable these in your settings)
Email you about account issues
Send a one-time code to your registered email address if you request a password reset; the code is deleted once it is used or expires
Update you on important changes

We never sell your data. We share information only with the service providers that help us run HiFriends, and in the limited circumstances described below. These providers process your data only to provide services to us, under contract, and cannot use it for their own purposes.

Service Providers We Use

Amazon Web Services (AWS) — cloud hosting, photo and data storage, and facial recognition processing (Amazon Rekognition)
Resend — sending you transactional email, such as a password-reset code
Expo, together with your device platform’s push service (such as Apple Push Notification service) — delivering push notifications
PostHog — product analytics that help us understand how HiFriends is used. Analytics data is linked to your account and includes your username.
Sentry — crash reporting and diagnostic data, as described in Section 2

Legal Requirements

We may share data if legally required by:

Court orders
Government requests
Safety emergencies

Business Changes

If there are significant changes to HiFriends’ business structure or ownership, we’ll notify you before your data becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

5. Your Control & Rights

Delete Any Photo of Yourself

Cascade Delete: Remove a photo from everywhere on HiFriends:

Your feed
The photographer’s HiFriends Roll (the in-app collection of photos they’ve taken)
Everyone else who received it
Your profile page
Anyone else’s profile page where it was published

How to delete: From your Me Feed, select the photo and confirm deletion. The photo is removed from everyone’s HiFriends immediately; the stored image files and face data are then permanently destroyed. No notifications are sent to the photographer.

What we can’t do: if the photo also exists somewhere outside HiFriends — on the photographer’s phone, or in a screenshot someone saved — we can’t reach it. Cascade delete removes the photo from HiFriends everywhere. It cannot remove it from someone’s device.

Delete Your Account

When you delete your account:

Your account, your photos, and your face data are all deleted
Your face data is permanently destroyed right away — not on a schedule
Everything is gone from HiFriends immediately; clearing the underlying stored files runs straight after and completes within 30 days

Block Anyone

You can block any HiFriends user at any time. See Blocking in Section 13.

“Not Me” Feedback

If you receive a photo that isn’t you, mark it “Not Me” to:

Remove it from your Me Feed
Help improve recognition accuracy

Request Your Data

To request a copy of your data, email support@hifriends.ai with the subject “Data Request” from your registered email address. We’ll respond within 30 days.

6. Data Security

We use industry-standard security:

Encryption in transit and at rest
Secure cloud infrastructure
Limited access controls

Important: No system is 100% secure. If there’s a breach, we’ll notify you as required by law.

7. Data Retention

Face template (biometric data): Kept while your account is active. Permanently destroyed when you delete your account — right away, not on a schedule — or within 24 months of your last interaction with HiFriends, whichever comes first. See the Face Recognition and Biometric Data section above for full terms.
Photos: Kept until you delete them.
Account info: Kept while your account is active.
Deleted data: Removed from our systems within 30 days.
Third-party processors: Some of the service providers we use, such as our analytics and crash-reporting providers, may keep limited records under their own retention policies after your HiFriends account is deleted. We do not control those independent retention periods.

8. Children’s Privacy

You must be 13 or older to use HiFriends. By creating an account, you represent and warrant that you are at least 13 years old. If we learn that someone under 13 has created an account, we will delete it promptly, along with all associated data, including biometric information.

Parents: Email us at support@hifriends.ai if your child under 13 has an account.

9. Location Information

We do not collect GPS or precise location data, and HiFriends does not ask for location permission. Two related points are worth noting:

Our diagnostic systems may receive your device’s IP address as part of crash reporting, which indicates an approximate, general location.
Photos you upload may contain location information that your device’s camera embedded in the photo file (EXIF metadata).

If we add optional location features in the future, we will update this policy, ask your permission first, keep them optional, and let you control location sharing in your settings.

10. Data Processing Location

Your data is processed and stored in the United States. By using HiFriends, you consent to your information being transferred to and processed in the US.

11. Changes to This Policy

We may update this policy. We’ll notify you of major changes through:

In-app notifications
Email
Requiring you to review and accept

12. Contact Us

Questions about privacy or your data?

Email: support@hifriends.ai Website: hifriends.ai

Mailing Address: HiFriends Inc. 2712 Loker Avenue West #1286 Carlsbad, CA 92010 United States

By creating an account, you consent to:

Collection and use of face recognition data, as described in the Face Recognition and Biometric Data section
This Privacy Policy
Receiving photos of yourself taken by other HiFriends users — this may include users you don’t know
Photos you take being delivered to the HiFriends users who appear in them, which may include users you don’t know

Remember: You can always delete photos of yourself or your entire account.

Blocking: You can block any HiFriends user at any time. Blocking works in both directions — neither of you can deliver photos to the other, and neither of you appears in the other’s search results or can view the other’s profile. The person you block is not told.

14. Your Privacy Rights

The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) gives California residents specific rights over their personal information. We honor these rights for every HiFriends user, no matter where you live:

Know and access. Ask us what personal information we’ve collected about you and get a copy. Use the Request Your Data process in Section 5.
Delete. Ask us to delete your personal information. You can do most of this yourself, instantly, in the app — delete any photo of yourself, or delete your whole account. For anything else, email us.
Correct. Ask us to fix personal information that’s inaccurate — email us at support@hifriends.ai and we’ll correct it.
No sale, no sharing for ads. We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it with anyone for cross-context behavioral advertising. Because there’s no sale or sharing, there’s nothing you need to opt out of.
Limits on sensitive information. Your face template is sensitive personal information under California law. We use it only to provide HiFriends — recognizing you so your photos can be delivered to you — and for nothing else.
No retaliation. Exercising any of these rights never changes how HiFriends treats you.

How to exercise these rights: use the in-app controls described in Section 5, or email support@hifriends.ai from your registered email address. We verify requests by matching your registered email, and we respond within 30 days. You can also have an authorized agent submit a request for you; we’ll ask for proof that you gave them permission.

The categories of personal information we collect, why we collect them, and who we share them with are described in Sections 2 through 4 of this policy.