Persona emails customers saying they don’t work with ICE or DHS amid ‘surveillance’ claims

Persona’s COO, Christie Kim has sent out an email to the company’s customers right as the online storm around the company was getting louder.

The email titled, “Note regarding recent news about Persona and Discord,” landed in inboxes some hours ago, including Roland’s, who shared screenshots of the email on X. The note hits three specific claims that have been making the rounds online.

The big one, of course, was addressing Persona’s alleged times with federal agencies. In the email, Persona says it does not work with the Department of Homeland Security or ICE. The company did acknowledge it is “actively working on a couple of potential contracts” with the government, but says those are purely for “workforce account security of government employees” and do not involve ICE or any DHS agency.

It also pushed back on claims tying it to Peter Thiel and Palantir. Founders Fund, which Thiel co-founded, is an investor, but Persona says Thiel has no board seat, offers no advice, and plays no operational role. The company adds that it and Palantir share no board members and have no business relationship whatsoever.

The third point was about investor access to data. Founders Fund and other investors, Persona says, have zero access to personal user data and no influence over how it’s handled.

The timing caught a lot of attention because it came right after the vmfunc report that kicked off this whole wave of questions.

We covered the vmfunc findings in detail yesterday. But shortly after that, things heated up even more when Persona CEO Rick Song posted his full email exchange with the researchers on Thursday. He talked about his disappointment and the threats his team had received. We reported on that back-and-forth here. Rick Song has since deleted his posts, but our coverage does include screenshots.

Persona powers age checks for big platforms, including Roblox, Reddit, and Character AI. It was also used briefly by Discord for some UK users before that test ended. The vmfunc researchers pointed out exposed code that handles biometric storage for up to three years along with FinCEN reports and other checks.

In the email, Persona says it won’t engage publicly with what it calls “speculative narratives,” but is privately reaching out to journalists to correct what it sees as false reporting.

That said, given where things stand with the ongoing researcher exchange, this probably isn’t the last message Persona will need to send.

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