At Airbnb, trust is the cornerstone of our community—where millions of people across the world place trust in each other as they travel or host stays.
A key part of building this trust is verifying the identity of our users. Our identity verification process is a series of steps we take to help ensure users are genuine.
When we verify your identity, we may ask you for a photo of your government-issued ID and a selfie to help make sure it’s really you. Some users may be able to consent to the use of facial recognition technology (Automatic photo review) or choose Manual photo review to match these photos, where offered and consistent with applicable law.
If you choose Automatic photo review, you consent to Airbnb and our authorized third-party service provider(s) using biometric information created by facial recognition technology to analyze the facial features from the photos you submit to check if the faces match. This is intended to help verify your identity quicker. This is optional, and your facial recognition data will be deleted as soon as the matching step is complete.
If you choose Manual photo review, a member of our team will compare and match your photos.
Facial recognition is only used for identity verification if you choose Automatic photo review.
If you consent, we’ll use automated facial recognition technology to create a unique facial identifier from the photos you provide. We will attempt to use this identifier to automatically match you in the photos you provided, to verify your identity.
If you choose Manual photo review, no facial recognition technology will be used on your photos during the ID verification process, and we’ll have a member of our team compare and match your photos.
Once you’ve been verified, an Identity verified badge will be displayed on your profile to indicate your verification status. The photos you submit in the identity verification process won’t be shown to other users on Airbnb or on your profile.
If we are unable to match your government ID and selfie using facial recognition, we may have a member of our team compare and match your photos manually to determine if your account can be verified. Learn more about why we verify identity.
Note: When you consent to automatic photo review using facial recognition, you agree that Airbnb can collect, process, and use your facial recognition data for identity verification by leveraging face recognition technology to analyze the submitted photos. The photos you submit on their own are not facial recognition data. Instead, a unique facial recognition identifier will be created during the processing of these photos. This information is considered to be biometric information, and will be deleted as soon as we complete the face-matching step.
Keep in mind that no verification process is entirely accurate. Our facial recognition process may be affected by conditions such as the lighting, photo quality, or changes in appearance between pictures you provide. In cases where we’re unable to match your photos using facial recognition, we’ll conduct an additional manual review or you may need to take another selfie. If you take another selfie, you may choose to do a Manual photo review instead.
If you’re having trouble taking a photo that meets our requirements, or you believe we got it wrong, you can contact us.
The option to use facial recognition for identity verification is offered to users in certain countries in Africa, the Americas, Asia Pacific (including Australia), and the Middle East.
Users in China may be required to complete an alternative identity verification process using facial recognition. Learn more.
If you consent to using facial recognition, we’ll collect and share your selfie and government-issued ID photos with the authorized third-party service provider(s), to create a unique facial identifier. That will allow us to attempt to match your government-issued ID and selfie photos using facial recognition technology. By “unique facial identifier,” we mean information about your physical biology detected by a software system—specifically, the facial features collected from the photos you submit—that is used for automatic photo review. This unique facial identifier may also be referred to as your biometric information, facial recognition data, or scan of your face geometry.
Know this unique facial identifier is not shared with Airbnb by our authorized third-party service provider(s), or vice versa.
As part of this process, we also collect certain technical, non-biometric information generated as part of the matching process. We briefly retain this information to serve our legitimate interest in evaluating the performance of the verification process and our authorized third-party service provider(s).
No application, website, or system is completely secure. However, we implement reasonable security policies and procedures to protect your facial recognition data, in alignment with our standard procedures for protecting personal information. We handle this data, like other information collected during identity verification, as described in our Privacy Policy.
Facial recognition data for the purposes of identity verification is only generated with your express consent. We delete facial recognition data as soon as the face-matching step of our identity verification process is complete.
Your information will be handled according to our Privacy Policy. Learn more about how to exercise your data subject rights.