If you've put your real identity on your passport on some platforms and you're going to use those platforms for purposes other than work, get ready to be a good and loyal dog.
this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2026
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I ordered some alcohol online because I couldn't find the brand of rum I was looking for locally. They did some age verification before I could order, same that I could have encountered in a grocery store.
Of course they just got sent a token and not a photo id which changes the calculus some. I'm against trusting random websites with personal information, not an age block on its own.
Banking and other finance related services are the only place where I don't mind KYC. Others I drop as soon as they request it and I seek alternatives.
But I will drop my online bank as well as soon google enforce the 'only verified developer applications'. 90% of my applications, incuding system applications like laucher, are not installed from the play store. I plan to switch to a linux 'phone' and only use services which are usable from a browser / without google securnet.
The thing is usually for the bank account you have gone through rigourous checks already to open or maintain and account to prove your age. So face verification via an app is redundant.
We know it’s bull anyway but it’s at least a valid reason for no.
I’m the same as you. I’ll switch to browser and TBh if they piss me off enough I’ll start using cash
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Personally I've found online banking, medical and travel services rather hard to resist.
Those new mobile phone things the kids are using also have biometrics and internets and look pretty handy to have around.
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In the US it is becoming common for federal services to require ID.me verification. I’ve never really had a problem with social security requiring ID verification. I do have a problem with data portals requiring it.
I even have a problem with ID.me, it's a private company that the US government wants you to give your driver's license and other information to. I don't trust that.
Absolutely valid. In the context of identity verification, I trust ID.me more than random companies that do not have government contracts because government contracts come with security and compliance regulations that require regular audit and make the chances of breach less likely. In either case, it’s a private company and, as any security nut would have told you, when it gets sold all bets are off like 23andme. Even more importantly, in the US, any kind of ID verification is a terrible idea, government or private, because we have no data regulation or privacy constraints. I call out the US here because we have no GDPR equivalent (CCPA wouldn’t hold up to federal data). Even if ID verification were conducted by the government, it can still be used for gnarly shit like we saw with ICE and DOGE.
On a sliding scale of evil, ID.me is the evil I know will currently fight to continue remaining the only evil which is the only solace I have in the US.
ID.ME is awful and buggy.
Identifying yourself for official business on a government site is not the same as providing official ID to a random picture sharing site. Pretty much every service has had a leak which required heaps of people to change their trusted password. How would you fix this when they leaked your full official identity?
The theme of this post is “what things online would I be okay giving my government ID to.” The author did not mention government services in the article, so I brought those up and differentiated which government services I think are reasonable for ID verification. In the US, social security is basically a retirement fund and a huge target for scammers. I’m willing to verify there or for my taxes (although those should just be done for me; different argument). A data portal eg census data is not something I am willing to verify my ID for because it should be public. US trademarks, for example, now require ID verification for an account. An account gives expands some access on the website and allows the ability to file. If I file a trademark, I am fine with verifying my identity. If I make an account, I don’t need to verify my identity until I file.
I didn’t mention picture sharing websites because I agree with the author’s stance.
It's just a new "Think of the children", only worse than going after backdoors in cryptography.
Now it's "OS-level" identity checks, which means TPM+secure boot hardware lockout.
This is just more child abuse disguised as "parental rights". It becomes clear how harmful this is when you realise that not all parents have their childrens best interests at heart (even if they think they do and sincerely mean well) and allowing parents to censor the information children have available to them allows them to censor information that the children learn only too late to prevent harm.
The issue is that any software is a blackbox when running.
There is no way for a user to know what code is running let alone verifying that a specific code is actually running on a device, combine that with a sector that keeps wanting more data.