Anthropic has updated its privacy policy to allow it to ask certain Claude users to verify their age and identity by uploading government-issued documents, with the change set to take effect on July 8, 2026.
According to the updated policy, published in June 2026, users flagged for potentially fraudulent activity — but not outright banned — may be required to submit a photo scan of a passport or driver’s license as part of an appeals process. Anthropic will also collect a selfie photo or video and a digitized face geometry template. Some states, including Illinois, legally classify face geometry data as protected biometric information.
An Anthropic spokesperson directed TechCrunch to a post from company employee Thariq Shihipar, who said the policy “applies only to a small subset of users” whose accounts are flagged. Anthropic is thought to have tens of millions of monthly users, though the company did not specify how many users would be affected.
Anthropic said it uses San Francisco-based identity-checking firm Persona to process verifications. The company said it controls how long Persona retains identity documents, but did not specify when the data is deleted. Persona is backed by Founders Fund, the investment firm founded by Peter Thiel, who also invests in Anthropic. Discord previously selected Persona for age-verification checks before reversing the decision following user backlash over the firm’s Thiel ties.
The policy update arrives amid ongoing tension between Anthropic and the Trump administration. Trump officials recently pressured Anthropic to pull its latest cybersecurity models over alleged jailbreak vulnerabilities. The Department of Defense had previously designated Anthropic a “supply chain risk,” reportedly after the company declined to allow its technology to be used for mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons.
Anthropic said the identity verification capability may also be used to enforce its terms of service, prevent fraud, and address security issues — and that users may see a verification prompt “when accessing certain capabilities, as part of our routine platform integrity checks, or other safety and compliance measures.”
Source: TechCrunch