Name Check Notice

Our community connects people who need assistance with community members willing to help. Asking everyone to use the name on their photo ID makes the community more accountable and discourages fake or impersonating accounts.

• Reads the given name and surname printed on the photo of your ID.
• Compares those names with the name you entered during registration, allowing for middle names, name order, hyphens and small typing differences.
• Compares the portrait printed on your ID with a photo of your face taken at the same moment, to confirm the document belongs to you.
• Asks you to look at the camera and then turn your head each way, in an order chosen at random, and checks that you moved as asked — so a photo on paper or on a screen cannot be used instead of a person.
• Reads your date of birth and document number from the photo and folds them, together with your name, into a one-way code that cannot be turned back into readable details. It is used only to tell two people who share a name apart, and to stop one person opening several accounts.
• Works out your age from the date of birth printed on the ID, because Helping Bandhu is only for people aged 18 and over. Only the answer — old enough or not, and the date it was checked — is kept; the date of birth itself is discarded with the photo.
• Records whether the name matched, whether the photos appeared to show the same person, and whether you moved as asked.

• It does not assess whether your document is genuine, valid or unaltered.
• It does not look for fraud or tampering.
• The face comparison creates no biometric template and no face data is stored: both photos are compared once and discarded, and only the outcome is kept.
• The movement check is a simple test that a real person is in front of the camera. It is not a laboratory-grade anti-spoofing test and it cannot rule out a determined impersonator.
• It does not keep your document number or date of birth in readable form anywhere, and it does not read your address, citizenship, barcode or machine-readable zone.
• It is not a background check, criminal-record check or character assessment.

The photo of your ID and the photos of your face are sent to our hosting provider's AI service, which reads the printed details, compares the faces and checks that you moved as asked. Every image is held in memory for the length of that request only. They are never written to our database or file storage, never shown to other members, and administrators cannot view them.

Our database holds only the minimum result:

• identity_status — for example VERIFIED or FAILED
• verification_date — when the check ran
• verification_provider — the method used
• The document type you chose (for example passport), without any document details
• An irreversible keyed hash of the name, used only to notice one person holding several accounts

Your legal name is stored so we can repeat the comparison if a question arises; it is not shown publicly. Other members see only your display name and city.

The photo is processed by our hosting provider's AI service on infrastructure that may be located outside Canada, including in the United States. Information processed outside Canada may be subject to the laws of that jurisdiction. By continuing with the name check you consent to this processing.

You can try again — for example if the photo was blurry, or you entered a short form of your name. There is a limit on attempts. After that a member of our team reviews the case by hand, which covers ordinary situations like middle names, multiple surnames, name changes and transliteration. Entering different names until one is accepted is not permitted.

You may ask what personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or withdraw your consent. Write to privacy@helpingbandhu.com. Deleting your account removes your profile and the result of your name check. See also our Privacy Policy.

A matched name means only that the name on the account matches the name on a photo ID. It does not mean a person is safe, trusted, background checked, criminal-record checked or suitable for every interaction. See the Safety Centre.