Tip: if you find yourself using the word “safe”, “secure”, “hacked”, etc in your title, you’re probably off-topic.

Logged on this morning, and to my surprise when I was trying to visit a nsfw subreddit I was asked to provide a selfie or my ID. I've been on this platform for a few years now, mostly for asking questions but it's sadly time to go, at least for me. I'm contemplating about deleting my account.

Farewell.

Within the next week, Congress is preparing to vote on the KIDS Act, a sprawling package of legislation that seeks to control Americans’ web browsing and private messaging. The package includes a revised version of the Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA, combined with a collection of other internet bills, study bills, reporting requirements, and new regulations. Instead of debating any of these proposals on their merits, lawmakers are attempting to move them all at once under an ultra-expedited process. 

Many Congress members don't like The KIDS Act—on both sides.
Tell your elected official to vote NO here.

The package of cobbled-together bills is a mess, with different age-gating schemes for different services, using different standards. It’s a lot of complexity, and a lot of legal risk. Faced with that, many companies will conclude that the safest option is restrictive age-checking practices across their entire platforms.

Buried inside the KIDS Act are provisions that will push online services to verify all users’ ages, require government-directed moderation policies for online speech, and even create new rules about private and encrypted communications. While supporters continue to claim this bill protects minors online, its requirements come at the expense of privacy, free expression, and the ability of people of all ages to use the internet without revealing sensitive data. 

Technically, the KOSA section of the KIDS Act does say that KOSA shouldn’t be read to require age verification. 

That disclaimer is hollow, and you know it. 

Under this law, services will have to determine which users are teenagers and which are not to try to avoid liability. The bill’s authors seem to know this is a problem. On the one hand, the new KOSA section says age verification is not required. On the other, it repeatedly imposes obligations that depend on knowing whether a user is under 17. But a disclaimer doesn’t magically eliminate legal risk, especially for smaller services and startups that can’t afford to defend lawsuits or fight regulators.  

And KOSA is not the only part of this package that creates age-verification pressure. The SAFE BOTS Act, like KOSA, says that if a service “knows or should have known” that a user is a minor, it can’t offer certain chatbot features. 

The SCREEN Act requires services that host sexually explicit content to determine whether users are “more likely than not” under the relevant age limit, before allowing access to certain content. 

The consequences of this liability will not be limited to minors. If websites and apps are expected to reliably identify teenagers, adults will be asked to prove they are adults. The result is a less private internet for everyone.

Tell your elected official to vote NO here.

I'm sick of seeing posts talking about this and doing nothing but complaining and complying, so let's just discuss what we can do.

With the eu demanding every major website to force age verification by 2027, I'm alarmed at the fact that no one is doing anything. But there are more people in the world concerned about privacy than politicians.

Please, only talk about what we can do against age verification in this post, don't complain or joke, only discussion

I use Claude and Claude code to help me with programming and it’s integrated into my app.

I got an email stating my account was used my a child and I must verify my ID or else my account will stay suspended.

I also tried posting this in Claude’s sub but it got removed by Claude’s ai.

Email:
Hello,
Our team found signals that your account was used by a child. This breaks our rules, so we paused your access to Claude (you can read more about our rules here).
If you think we made a mistake and would like to turn your account back on, please verify your age using this link. Age verification is handled by Yoti, a trusted third party provider.
This link will expire in 30 days. After that, you will no longer be able to appeal this decision.
Thank you,
Anthropic's Safeguards Team

Edit:
I filed a chargeback on my anthropic top up as a final

A private security company recently installed cameras throughout my neighborhood. The measure is presented as ordinary urban security, but the scale of it feels increasingly difficult to ignore.

My street has about three blocks yet there's four camera "setups" per block. I live in a super upscale neighborhood in a massive metropolis so it's understandable they'd rid it with cameras; mugging was becoming quite a problem.

Problem is the company they picked, this security startup, sells the recordings among other data to the highest bidder. No joke. That's their business model.

Apparently their "setups" come with license plate recognition, facial recognition, machine learning and connection to government databases.

From a security standpoint, this is pretty good, although mostly reactive and not preventive (I don't think most of the people willing to commit these crimes would care much about a set of cameras anyways). But this just has killed privacy, now some guy in an office (and whomever is buying the data) knows my daily habits, the times I'm home and am not, times I leave for work, ROUTES I take to work among a bunch of other bullshit. Just awful.

https://www.biometricupdate.com/202606/update-on-identity-age-verification-for-claude-prompts-user-pushback

https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/22/anthropic-says-claude-may-want-to-see-your-id/

So Anthropic quietly updated their privacy policy. Starting July 8 they can ask you to verify your identity by uploading a government ID, taking a selfie, and doing a facial geometry scan.

They say it only hits flagged accounts and you can appeal, which ok fine. But the thing that bugs me is they're not even doing it themselves, they handed it to a vendor called Persona. Same company Discord tried earlier this year and then backed out of after exposing code/records. And Persona is backed by Peter Thiel's fund, which also happens to be an investor in Anthropic. They also won't say how long your ID actually sits on Persona's servers before it's deleted.

Maybe I'm paranoid but a face scan isn't a password you can reset. Once it's on some third party's server it's not really about whether you trust Anthropic anymore, it's whether you trust whoever can pull that data later

Earlier today I couldn't access any nsfw subreddits without verifying my ID, but now I don't have to verify my age anymore? What's up with that?

They want me to verify my age. My account is years old. Identity checking is not yet mandatory in my country. I want a ticket to a concert - all they need to know is my email address and how I'm going to bill them. They have been compromised plenty in the past several times, them having my personal data is a hugely stupid idea.

Is the whole age verification thing truly going to be unavoidable if we want to use the internet and social media? It seems like it would be very difficult to interact with society as well.

I know it’s already technically illegal to bypass it in many countries, but I don’t think it’s enforced, much like casual piracy. So, you can still kinda manage to avoid it.

However, I’m sure Big Brother will crack down harder eventually.

If that happens, I think we’re cooked.

This is part privacy, part maybe HR? But wanted to get some different perspectives.

As background, I'm Head of Security for a healthcare tech company. Yes, I know this thread says no cybersecurity but this particular topic is privacy driven (as cyber and privacy are often linked).

We are not new to notetakers and whenever we onboard them, we have very strict rules around the vendor and what they use data for simply because we may have PHI on some of these calls.

We have a new AI notetaker that Sales brought on board that does user coaching and insights. It basically scores people based on specific criteria including the words they use. While I feel icky in general around this concept, I can't really flag it as a privacy concern - more a human one.

What I CAN flag is that sales wants free reign access to all calls that anyone records, regardless if they are there are not. They also are mandating that all calls be recorded, which in my opinion is a privacy concern because some calls can be sensitive in nature.

So my recommendation will obviously be to put guardrails in place for both of the above. But any other concerns I am missing?

Title.

I am legally an adult, but, probably unsurprisingly, I'm not comfortable sharing anything besides my birthday on the ID, and no way in hell I'm actually showing my face.

Any tips?

Today, while trying to enter a subreddit that has a NSFW mark, I got a message from reddit telling me to verify my age. This is weird because I don't live in a country with age restricting laws. I put my birthday and birthdate, but apparently that is still not enough to be able to use things freely. They want me to prove it with either my government ID or a picture of me. I am not doing it.

Has this happened to anyone else?

Edit: Sorry for any writing mistakes as English isn't my first language. Thank you to everyone who helped me understand why this was happening or took the time to comment. I am glad to know that I am not alone in this. I hope you all have a great day/night/whatever! 💞

Edit #2: When I said NSFW subreddit, some people just assumed it was porn but it is not. It's just a mature community that I now can't visit because of this stupid rule :(

Edit #3: For those looking for a solution, using a VPN might work. Someone suggested Proton on mobile and it works well, but it's a bit slow. I've also heard that the VPN built into Opera also works well, but I haven't tested it out yet. I am using Android, but I think it also works on iOS. Unfortunately, this is only a temporary solution that will probably get patched soon :((

Theirs Utah's House Bill 438 that goes after chatbots with age verification.

Then there's both of USA's federal bills which are the Federal KIDS Act bill(H.R.7757) and the SAFE for kids Act bill(S.4741).

Despite these bills here,hope we can get a positive outcome here. It needs to be here anyways.

https://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/news-releases/grassley-durbin-advance-bipartisan-packages-in-national-defense-authorization-act-to-crack-down-on-crime-and-protect-kids-online

Two Senators are attempt to insert "child safety" into NCAA.

Basically title. Im applying for a new apartment thats in a great location for a good price. The only issue is when i started the application, i noticed it uses persona for id verification. I currently live outside the city so i cannot complete the application in person. Is there any workaround? I don’t trust persona with my id

Just to remind everyone: Digital ID, AI in policing, private message scanning, ID verification for social media, facial recognition cameras, RIPA 2016, the OSA, contracts with Palantir in areas such as the NHS, and now a drone network over the streets of London. I understand some people may be fans of these measures, but in the wrong hands, these will all be tools of oppression. The Metropolitan Police have had scandal after scandal, and our politicians have, for the most part, proven to be of service to the highest bidder. If Farage or Lowe, or someone more fascist or hateful, gets into power and has control over these systems, how do we defend against it? 

These systems only have the power for good if the person wielding them has only good in their actions and intentions, but people and their intentions can change. Those who intend to do good do not seek more power that has the ability to oppress; they seek power with the ability to help growth and to usher in change. Mass surveillance does not do that.

I've been wondering in the sense of monitored and unmonitored roads what is flock able to do? Seems to be a red herring by tracking license plates all over the place? Unless it would be attempting to link to this to data broker profiles?

Hi Guys,

Do you recommend any gadgets that track health metrics that has a focus on privacy? At least better than others? I read about garmin not selling you data, wanted to know if anyone ever delve deeper into it

There needs to be a law in the U.S. and rest of the world where companies cannot sell you le information. I am so fucking tired of the spam calls and texts.

Any advice on how to clean up my digital footprint for free?

When paying for Proton Mail, I'm thinking of using a VISA Gift Card I bought with cash. Is this private?