关于Microsoft Cognitive Services Face API数据留存、存储及删除的问询

Hey there, let's tackle your two technical questions about Microsoft Face API data management:

1. How long is Face API data stored after terminating a Microsoft Cognitive Services subscription? #

When you terminate your Cognitive Services subscription linked to Face API, all your related data—including face images, facial feature templates, and stored face lists/person groups—will be permanently deleted within 30 days of the subscription termination. This timeline is standard across most Cognitive Services offerings, designed to comply with data privacy rules and give you a buffer if you choose to reactivate the subscription later.

2. How to delete Face API image data manually, and how long does Microsoft retain this data? #

Manual deletion methods #

Microsoft provides dedicated API endpoints to let you delete your Face API data on demand. Here are the key operations you can use:

• Use the Delete Face endpoint to remove specific face entries from a person or face list.
• Use Delete Person to wipe an entire person (and all their associated face images) from a person group.
• Use Delete Face List or Delete Person Group to delete entire collections of face data.

These operations work via the REST API or official SDKs (like .NET, Python, Java), so you can integrate them into your workflow to clean up data whenever you need to.

Data retention duration during active subscription #

While your subscription is active:

• Temporary data from one-time face detection/analysis requests (like raw image data used for processing) is discarded right after the operation finishes.
• Data you intentionally store in face lists, person groups, or similar persistent collections will stay until you actively delete it via the APIs above, or until your subscription is terminated (triggering the 30-day deletion timeline).

Note: You can check the geographic region of your data storage through Azure's global infrastructure documentation, per your original note.

内容的提问来源于stack exchange，提问作者Peshmerge