Does the PimEyes Opt-Out Work? What Reddit Reports

Does the PimEyes opt-out actually work?

Per Reddit, yes, with maintenance. The most detailed account I found was in a January 2024 thread asking whether opting out of PimEyes actually worked ↗, from the cam and creator community that has the most reason to check. One user who had "thousands of results," opted out with an anonymized ID, then ran a self-check every two weeks, reported zero results for the last year, with a single old photo the only thing that ever resurfaced.

The caveats in that same thread are honest: at least one person had to submit the form twice before it took, and the opt-out only filters what PimEyes has already indexed. It is free, and it keeps filtering new matches once you are on the blocklist, which is why regular re-checks are the norm rather than a one-time submission.

The catch: you have to send PimEyes your ID

This is the fault line in every thread. To opt out you submit a clear face photo and a photo ID, and privacy-minded users hate it. In an April 2026 thread on opting out of AI face-search sites ↗, one of the most upvoted replies was blunt: giving these sites a clear photo of yourself could be used against you. The recurring phrase for the whole situation is submitting data to delete data.

The harm-reduction answer the community settled on is redaction. In a March 2025 r/privacy opt-out writeup ↗, a user described covering the ID number, issue and expiry dates, and signature, leaving only name and photo, and stripping EXIF data from the uploads first. That is the practical compromise: give them only what verifies you, and nothing more.

Why do results come back after opting out?

Because the opt-out blocklists images PimEyes has already indexed, but new crawls pick up new and mirrored photos. Reddit users point to two mechanisms: fresh images of you getting indexed later, and clone or archive sites republishing photos from otherwise private accounts. The standing advice, repeated across years of threads, is to treat this as ongoing vigilance, not a one-time fix, and to re-run the opt-out with a new reference photo when results reappear.

The other face engines to opt out of too

PimEyes is not the only one, and Reddit treats face-search removal as a checklist. The names that come up alongside it are FaceCheck.ID and Lenso.ai, and users increasingly opt out of all three in one sitting. One r/privacy user described doing exactly that, PimEyes, FaceCheck, and Lenso together, in a single session. Note that FaceCheck.ID moved to paid search in 2024, and some users rate it more accurate than PimEyes, which makes opting out of it worth the extra few minutes.

For the full PimEyes walkthrough, including the exact form and what the blocklist does and does not cover, see how to opt out of PimEyes. To understand what face search can find in the first place, is your face searchable covers how these engines work.

Find out what is searchable before you opt out

The opt-out is reactive: it hides matches that already exist. The useful first move is knowing what is out there, which photos of you are public, where they live, and what metadata they carry, so you can opt out where it counts and clean up the sources you control. Clearfront scans your digital footprint in one sweep on your own machine, including the public traces and image metadata tied to your name, so nothing leaves your device. Get the free removal guide to work through face search and the rest in order, or install Clearfront free to scan yourself first.