About PostWatch

What is PostWatch?

HOA PostWatch is a community safety platform designed exclusively for HOA (Homeowners Association) communities. It enables residents to upload photos of suspicious activity and uses advanced facial recognition to track repeat incidents within their neighborhood.

Technology

PostWatch employs a sophisticated 15-step face processing pipeline:

1. Image Loading & Enhancement — CLAHE contrast enhancement and unsharp mask sharpening
2. Anti-Spoof Detection — FFT-based screen capture detection
3. Face Detection — RetinaFace deep learning detector
4. Quality Gates — Minimum size (60px), confidence (90%), sharpness, and pose checks
5. Dual-Pass Retry — Lanczos upscaling for difficult images
6. Padded Crop Extraction — 40% padding with optional upscale
7. Dual-Model Embeddings — ArcFace (primary) + FaceNet512 (secondary) ensemble
8. Vector Similarity Search — pgvector HNSW index with cosine distance
9. Centroid Averaging — Running-mean improvement with each new sighting
10. Color Rating Assignment — Red (3+), Yellow (1-2), Green (new)

Privacy First

PostWatch is built with privacy as a core principle:

• Each HOA community's data is completely isolated — no cross-community matching
• Service is blocked in IL, TX, and WA to comply with biometric privacy laws
• Users must provide explicit biometric consent before using the platform
• False positive dispute system ensures continuous accuracy improvement

Platform Relationship

PostWatch is a standalone service provided by HOAPOST, LLC. It operates independently from the main HOAPOST community platform and shares no data, accounts, or infrastructure with it.