Anthropic may demand IDs from flagged Claude users
Get the Tech newsletter
Daily tech — startups, AI labs, chips, the launches that shape the next decade. Free.
- Anthropic updated its privacy policy on June 17 — set to take effect July 8 — to potentially require flagged users to upload a government-issued passport or driver's license, plus a selfie and a "face geometry template," biometric data some states like Illinois treat as legally protected.
- The change applies only to a "small subset" of users whose accounts are flagged for potentially fraudulent activity but not banned, per Anthropic's Thariq Shihipar, who said it is unrelated to the "Fable or Mythos rollout" and part of an update to the appeals process.
- Persona, a San Francisco-based identity-verification vendor backed by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, will handle the checks; Anthropic controls how long Persona retains user documents but declined to say when the data is deleted.
- The policy shift comes amid an impasse with the Trump administration, more than a week after officials forced Anthropic to pull its latest cybersecurity models over allegations that an apparent jailbreak could break the models' guardrails.
- The Department of Defense earlier designated Anthropic a "supply chain risk," reportedly in retaliation for not allowing government use of its technology for mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons.
- Discord previously selected Persona for age-verification checks but reversed course after user backlash over the vendor's Thiel ties — a precedent that may foreshadow how Anthropic users respond.
Why it matters: Biometric data — passports, driver's licenses, face geometry templates — flows to a Thiel-backed vendor on behalf of a company already fighting the Trump administration over AI access. Anthropic won't disclose how long Persona retains user documents, and Persona's prior Discord reversal shows these privacy concerns aren't theoretical.
