On April 15 (UTC+8), Anthropic quietly launched identity verification for select Claude features, requiring a passport and selfie. This follows a data breach at Persona, a verification platform linked to government monitoring, which exposed user data on Discord. Anthropic cited Persona’s technical and security strengths. The new process is unrelated to a recent underage user issue involving Yoti. Risk-on assets remain sensitive to regulatory changes, with liquidity and crypto markets closely monitoring developments in AI policy.

ME News reports that on April 15 (UTC+8), Persona inadvertently exposed a platform interface linked to government surveillance, leading to the leakage of Discord users’ verification data, after which Discord publicly distanced itself from Persona. An investigation by Mashable found that personal data of LinkedIn users verified through Persona could be shared with up to 17 companies. Anthropic stated on its page that it selected Persona based on its “technical capabilities, privacy controls, and security safeguards.” This identity verification incident is independent of recent controversies surrounding age verification. Around April 12, multiple users reported on Reddit being incorrectly flagged as minors by Claude, resulting in account suspensions; that verification process used Yoti, not Persona. (Source: BlockBeats)