How verification works

Alive face, matched to the photos you post.

Every account on Sole has stood in front of a camera and done four things a photograph cannot do. That recording is a liveness check: proof that a real, present human is holding the phone, and that the face on the profile is theirs.

This page walks it screen by screen: what the camera captures, what is derived from it, what is deleted, and what happens when it does not work the first time.

There is no verified badge at the end of it. Everyone has done this, so a badge would sit on every profile, which makes it decoration.

Once, at sign-upOur own system, our own serversNo verification vendorLast updated 14 August 2026

4: Actions on live video, given one at a time, in an order you cannot rehearse
24h: The longest we hold the video, whatever else happens
0: Third parties who see your face at any point
1: Face, one account. A ban keys off the face, not the email

01 · The check, in order

Four screens between the code and your profile.

Consent is asked for on its own screen, before the camera opens. Then a short recording, then the photos it is matched against, then you are through. Nothing about the flow is hidden behind a spinner you cannot read.

Step 1 of 4
One check,
once.
We record a few seconds of your face to check a live person is here, then match it to your photos.
The video is deleted within 24 hours
A face map stays while your account does
No other company ever sees it
I agree to the face check, and to Sole keeping a face map of me.
Start the check
Locked until you agree
Screen 01 · Consent
Plain words, its own step, its own checkbox. The button stays locked until you agree.
Step 2 of 4
Live
Hold up two fingers.
Take your time. There is no clock, and bad light is not a rejection.
Look ahead
Two fingers
Lean back
Turn left
Screen 02 · Liveness
Four prompts on live video: look ahead, two fingers, lean back, turn left. There is no clock.
Step 3 of 4
Now the photos we match to.
3 of 3 faces. Keep three for as long as the account is open.
Match my face
Screen 03 · Photos
Six photos, at least three clear faces. These are what the recording is matched to.
Step 4 of 4
You’re in.
Done for good. You will never be asked to do this again.
The videoDeleted
Face mapKept, encrypted
Next checkNever
Start looking
Screen 04 · Verified
Done for good. The video is gone; a face map stays behind to protect the account.

Illustrative mockups · people shown are AI generated

Why the prompts are strange

Holding up two fingers and leaning back are not arbitrary. They are what makes it a liveness check rather than a photo upload, and they defeat two separate attacks at once: a printed photo or a mask held up to the lens, and a deepfake injected into the camera feed.

A still image cannot lean. A generated face cannot follow an instruction it was not told about in advance.

The actions are given one at a time, in an order chosen when the check starts, so there is nothing to prepare beforehand. Take as long as you need over each one: bad light is not a rejection.

What the photos are for

Photos are collected inside verification, not after it, because the face match needs something to match against. Six slots, at least three of them a clear view of your own face.

Your profile has to carry three photographs of your face for as long as the account exists. Every replacement you add later is checked against the face map before it goes live. That check is the reason the map outlives sign-up, and it is the only reason.

The face map, in one line: numbers describing the geometry of your face. It identifies you, and it cannot be turned back into a picture of you.

What is kept, and for how long


The video	Deleted the moment the match finishes, and within 24 hours regardless
The face map	Kept while your account exists. Deleted within 30 days of you deleting the account
Your photos	Until you replace them or delete them
If you are banned	The map sits on a blocklist for three years, used for nothing except refusing you a new account
Who runs it	We do. Our own system, our own servers, in India. No third-party verification vendor sees your face

Saying no

Consent for the face check is asked for on its own screen, in its own step, immediately before the camera opens. It is never folded into a single agreement you scroll past at sign-up.

You can say no. Saying no means you cannot finish sign-up, because an unverified account is the specific thing verification exists to prevent. We would rather tell you that plainly than pretend the choice is freer than it is.

When the camera will not cooperate

Three gentle retries first, each with the specific fix that usually helps: better light, no hat, a little more distance. A new haircut has never disqualified anyone.

After three tries a person takes over. You follow the status in the app rather than waiting on an email, and if the reviewer cannot confirm the match they write you a note saying what went wrong. Nobody is turned away by a wall.

Verification
A person is on it.
The camera could not confirm it after three tries, so it came to us. Nothing else about your account is on hold.
ReceivedToday, 14:02
A person is reviewingUsually within a day
ClearedYou will see it here
No email to wait on. This screen updates itself, and you can close the app.
Screen 05 · Review status
Pending, processing, cleared: visible in the app the whole time.
Verification
We couldn’t confirm it.
Not a rejection of you, and not final. Here is what the reviewer actually saw.
RA note from the reviewer
Two of your three photos are side-on, so there was not enough of your face to match against the recording. One clear front-facing photo should fix it.
Add a clearer photo
Record again
Still stuck? Write to us and a second reviewer picks it up.
Screen 06 · Rejected
A note from the reviewer, then a second set of photos or a new recording.

What never happens to any of it

It is not sold. Not for money, not for anything else of value, to anyone.
It is not shared with advertisers or data brokers. Sole carries no advertising, and there is no analytics kit collecting on anyone else’s behalf.
It is not used to train models.
It is not pooled with a parent company or a sister app. Sole has neither.
It is not used to make an automated decision that a person will not review on request. That is what manual review is.

The only circumstance in which any of it leaves us is a valid, written, lawful order from an authority entitled to make one, and then only the part the order actually reaches. The longer version of all of this is on the sensitive data page, and the retention windows above are the same ones in the Sole privacy policy.

Taking it back

Delete the account and the face map goes with it.

Within 30 days, in every case except the ban blocklist described above. Ask for a copy of what you gave us and we send a machine-readable export, also within 30 days.

The sensitive data policy The privacy policy

Sole. is a product of Menula LLP · Hyderabad, India