You Switched to Claude Over Surveillance Fears. Now It Needs Your Passport – Decrypt

Anthropic quietly revealed id verification necessities for Claude this week, asking sure customers handy over a government-issued picture ID and a dwell selfie. One thing its rivals don’t require.

“We’re rolling out id verification for a number of use instances, and also you would possibly see a verification immediate when accessing sure capabilities, as a part of our routine platform integrity checks, or different security and compliance measures,” Anthropic stated. “We solely use your verification knowledge to substantiate who you might be and never for another functions.”

Thousands and thousands of customers fled OpenAI for Anthropic in February after OpenAI signed a deal to deploy AI on Pentagon categorised networks—a contract Anthropic turned down over issues about mass surveillance and autonomous weapons. Every day signups broke data, and free customers had been up 60% since January, Anthropic stated on the time. The privacy-conscious crowd had discovered its house.

That crowd, it appears, could now have some paperwork to organize if it desires to proceed utilizing Claude. The reactions to date have been fairly adverse, mentioning that it’s a deliberate determination and never a regulation or a compulsory order imposed by a authorities on Anthropic as a service supplier.

In line with the assistance heart web page, which went dwell on April 14, Anthropic chosen Persona Identities as its verification associate—the identical KYC infrastructure used throughout monetary companies—and requires a bodily, undamaged passport, driver’s license, or nationwide id card. Photocopies, cellular IDs, and pupil credentials do not rely. A dwell selfie may be required.

The coverage is not common but. Verification will set off when accessing “sure capabilities,” throughout “routine platform integrity checks,” or as a part of security and compliance measures. Anthropic hasn’t stated publicly which options are gated, or what person conduct would possibly immediate a verify. The corporate didn’t instantly reply to Decrypt‘s request for extra particulars.

On knowledge dealing with, Anthropic attracts a cautious line: your ID and selfie go to Persona’s servers, not Anthropic’s personal techniques. The corporate says it’s the knowledge controller setting the phrases, and that Persona can use the data to confirm id and enhance fraud detection. The information is encrypted in transit and at relaxation, excluded from mannequin coaching, and will not be shared with third events for advertising and marketing, one thing Anthropic has been cautious to vow since its earliest business insurance policies.

Cautious guarantees, although, have a historical past of assembly careless infrastructure. An October 2025 breach at Discord uncovered roughly 70,000 authorities IDs customers had submitted for age verification. Persona is a severe participant on this house, however third-party custody of presidency paperwork has demonstrated repeatedly that no third celebration is immune.

Tighter id controls additionally match a sample Anthropic has been constructing towards. In December, the corporate introduced classifiers to detect customers who self-identify as minors. A number of grownup customers had their accounts suspended anyway, reporting that whole challenge histories had been wiped whereas they tried to enchantment incorrect flags.

Accounts registered from areas Anthropic would not formally serve are additionally topic to bans—a element that lands hardest on Chinese language customers accessing Claude by means of intermediaries, since a dwell selfie matched towards a bodily authorities doc is tough to pretend your method by means of.