Why is smiling not allowed in passport photos?

Although you may think you look better when you’re smiling, it’s still not a good idea to do so when taking a passport photograph.

The main reason why you shouldn’t smile or wear glasses in passport photos is that all new passports contain a chip with biometrical information extracted from the photo.

The photograph is scanned and key facial characteristics, such as the distance between the eyes, from the tip of the nose to the chin etc, are used to generate the so-called mathematical map.

Anything distorting or obscuring the proportions, such as wide smiles, reduces the efficiency of the algorithm used, kind of like a blurred photograph would do.

At airports, passengers pass through an e-gate looking at a camera scanning the face. The computer then decides whether the mathematical map generated at the airport matches the one in the biometrical passport. If not, it can cause problems.

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