Biometric Data Retention & Destruction Schedule

This schedule is published under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (740 ILCS 14/15(a)) and applies to all users of Saathum worldwide. It supplements our Privacy Policy.

1. What we collect

Before you post publicly on Saathum for the first time, we ask you to complete a short liveness check using your device camera. This produces a scan of facial geometry — a biometric identifier — together with a short video or set of images of your face.

We collect this only with your prior, explicit, written consent, given by ticking a box before the camera opens. The box is never pre-ticked. If you decline, nothing is captured, and you may continue to use Saathum to browse, read, and watch.

2. Why we collect it

There are exactly two purposes. We use it for nothing else.

To confirm you are a real, living person before you can post publicly, list an item, go live, message someone you have never messaged, post in a group, or upload media to a public part of Saathum.
Safety and lawful-request response. Tying each account to a liveness check helps keep Saathum a safe community and deters misuse, and allows us to respond if we are lawfully compelled by a court or law enforcement to do so.

We do not sell, lease, trade, or profit from your biometric data. We do not use it for advertising, for facial recognition, to identify you in photographs or videos, or to match you against any database of other people. We cannot identify you from your face; we can only confirm that a live person completed the check.

3. Who else sees it

The liveness check is performed by our verification provider, Didit, acting on our instructions. We do not disclose your biometric data to anyone else, except where we are required to by a subpoena, court order, warrant, or other lawful process, or where disclosure is required by law.

4. How long we keep it

While your account is open

We retain your liveness record for as long as your account remains open, because the check is renewed periodically (currently every 90 days) and the record establishes when you were last verified.

After you delete your account

What happens then depends on where you live. Two tracks:

Track	Who	Face scan & video	Verification record
Protective	Residents of Illinois and Texas, and anyone whose state of residence we do not know	Permanently destroyed when you delete your account	Kept 256 days, then permanently destroyed
Standard	All other users	Kept 256 days, then permanently destroyed	Kept 256 days, then permanently destroyed

If we are unsure which track applies to you, we apply the Protective track and destroy the face scan immediately. We do not infer your residence from your IP address or device location; we rely on the state you tell us.

The verification record retained in either case contains no biometric data. It is a timestamp of when you were verified, how, a one-way hash of your email address, and your account identifier — enough to answer a lawful request about whether an account existed and when it was checked, and nothing more.

Accounts subject to a legal hold

If material has been reported on your account that we are legally required to preserve — most notably suspected child sexual abuse material — we are obliged by law to retain the relevant content and records, and we will do so notwithstanding any deletion request, for as long as the law requires. We will not destroy evidence we are required to keep.

5. When we destroy it

Biometric identifiers are permanently destroyed at the earliest of:

the date the purpose for collecting them has been satisfied;
256 days after you delete your account (or immediately on deletion, under the Protective track above);
three years after your last interaction with Saathum; or
the date you withdraw consent, unless a legal hold applies.

Destruction is performed by an automated process that runs continuously. Once destroyed, biometric data cannot be recovered by us or by anyone else.

6. Withdrawing consent

You may withdraw your consent at any time by deleting your account, or by contacting us at [email protected]. Withdrawing consent means you will no longer be able to post publicly on Saathum. Your biometric data will be destroyed in accordance with the schedule above.

7. How it is protected

Biometric data is stored encrypted at rest, in access-restricted storage separate from your profile, using a reasonable standard of care that is the same as or more protective than the manner in which we store other confidential and sensitive information.

8. Changes to this schedule

If we change the periods stated above, we will publish the updated schedule here and ask you to give consent again before any further biometric data is collected. Consent you gave to a previous version does not carry over to a new one.

9. Contact

Ava Global International, Inc. — Delaware, United States
[email protected]