Facial recognition in shops
Last updated 2 October 2026
Some shops that use AEY Vision compare the faces of people coming in with a watchlist of people who have stolen from, threatened or attacked shops using AEY Vision. If you saw a sign about facial recognition, this page explains what happens, what is kept, and how to ask whether you are on the watchlist or to be removed from it.
The short version
- If you are not on the watchlist, your face is compared and then deleted within a second or so. It is never stored and nobody sees it.
- The watchlist only holds adults that a shop saw commit theft worth £100 or more (or repeated theft), violence, threats against staff, criminal damage or fraud. Every entry is checked by us before other shops are told about it, and it is deleted a year after the incident.
- Software never decides anything about you. A possible match is shown to a member of staff, with both faces side by side, and they decide whether it is the same person. Staff are told never to approach, search, refuse or accuse anyone because of a match.
- You can ask whether you are on the watchlist, ask to be removed, or object, using the form at the bottom of this page.
Who is responsible
The watchlist is run jointly by AEY Vision Limited, which provides AEY Vision (registered in England and Wales, company number 17224921, 25 Pierston Avenue, Blackpool, FY2 9UT), and each shop that uses it. We are joint controllers under an agreement that sets out who does what (you can read it here). The shop is responsible for its own cameras. We are your point of contact for anything about the watchlist: hello@aeyvision.com, or the form below.
What happens when you walk in
A camera chosen by the shop, usually at the entrance or a till, sees you. Software finds your face, works out how clear it is, and turns it into a set of numbers (a “template”) that can be compared with the templates of the people on the watchlist. This happens on AEY Vision's own computers, not in the shop.
- No match (almost everyone): the template is thrown away as soon as it has been compared. It is not written anywhere, sent anywhere or seen by anyone. Faces too small or blurred to compare reliably are not compared at all.
- A possible match: staff at that shop get an alert on the AEY Vision app or console with your face as the camera saw it next to the face on the watchlist, and decide whether it is the same person. If they say it is not, the picture of you is deleted at once. Either way, the alert is deleted after 30 days.
When the shop is closed, the same comparison is made on the picture from an intruder alarm.
Who is on the watchlist, and what is kept about them
A shop can only add someone after an incident its staff saw or recorded on camera:
- theft worth £100 or more, or theft by someone who has stolen from the business before;
- violence or assault;
- threats or abuse towards staff;
- criminal damage or fraud.
For violence, criminal damage and fraud, the shop must have reported it to the police and give the crime reference. The member of staff confirms that the account is accurate, that the person appears to be 18 or over, and that they have no reason to think the person is vulnerable. Children are never added: the software also refuses a face it reads as under 18. We review every entry; until we have, it is only checked at the shops of the business that added it, and an entry we have not reviewed within 14 days is deleted.
For each person on the watchlist we keep:
- up to five pictures of their face from the incident, the picture each came from, and the templates;
- a reference number (such as W-0042), the kind of incident and when it happened;
- the shop's short account of what happened, the crime reference if there is one, and who added them;
- when and where they were seen again, and whether staff confirmed it.
We do not keep names. Other shops never see the account of what happened: when a person is seen at another shop, its staff see only the faces and the kind of incident.
How long things are kept
| Faces that match nobody | Not kept at all |
| An alert staff say is not the same person | The picture is deleted at once; the alert record after 30 days |
| Any other alert | 30 days |
| A watchlist entry | One year from the incident, unless a new incident is added; deleted sooner if it is removed |
| A record of who added, reviewed, saw or removed an entry | Two years after the entry is deleted, to show the watchlist was used properly |
Why this is lawful
A template made from your face is biometric data, and the watchlist holds information about alleged offences, so the law sets a higher bar. We and the shops rely on:
- legitimate interests (UK GDPR Article 6(1)(f)): protecting shop staff and customers from violence and threats, and preventing theft;
- for the biometric and offence data, substantial public interest (UK GDPR Articles 9(2)(g) and 10, with the Data Protection Act 2018, Schedule 1, paragraph 10: preventing or detecting unlawful acts). This applies because asking for consent would defeat the purpose. We keep the appropriate policy document the Act requires.
We assessed the risks before starting (a data protection impact assessment), and each shop completes its own before switching the watchlist on. Shops must put up signs at their entrances before the cameras' view.
Where it is used
Only in shops in the United Kingdom. It is not offered in the European Union, Australia or Canada, where the law treats it differently. It is not used at homes, offices or any site that is not a shop.
How accurate it is
No facial recognition is perfect, which is why a person always checks. We measured ours before using it:
- On real security camera footage of 25 people walking through a doorway, recorded in two separate sessions, every person was recognised in the second session from a picture taken in the first, and no stranger scored anywhere near the level that raises an alert.
- Against a list of 871 people, a stranger's face reached the alert level less than once in a million comparisons.
- On small or blurred faces it misses more people, rather than mistaking one person for another: the alert level is set above every stranger we saw in testing.
Facial recognition can be less accurate for some groups of people. We tested ours by perceived ethnicity and sex on a public set of faces: no stranger reached the alert level in any group. The only faces that did were close relatives, such as sisters, which is one reason a person always checks. That test had fewer faces of some groups than others, and we will publish a larger one. Every alert staff mark as “not the same person” is counted, and we review those figures to keep the alert level where it should be.
What it is never used for
Not for marketing, counting or following customers, building profiles, monitoring staff, or anything other than protecting shops from the incidents above. Watchlist information is never sold. The police may receive information about an incident from a shop under the law, as they could without facial recognition; we do not give the police access to the watchlist.
Your rights
You can:
- ask whether you are on the watchlist, and for a copy of what is held about you;
- ask for something wrong to be corrected, or for your entry to be deleted;
- object to being on the watchlist, or to your face being compared;
- complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk, 0303 123 1113).
We answer within one month. To search the watchlist for you we need a recent photo of your face; it is used only for your request and deleted when we have answered. We may ask you to confirm who you are first.
Changes
We will update this page when anything here changes, and change the date at the top.