Anthropic adds Persona-based ID checks to Claude for select use cases

Anthropic has started rolling out identity verification for some Claude users, requiring a government-issued photo ID and a live selfie before granting access to certain capabilities.

According to a help page published on Claude’s support site, the checks are not universal. Users may see a verification prompt when accessing specific advanced features, as part of routine platform integrity checks, or when safety and compliance requirements kick in.

Some users have already reported being prompted during sign-up for the Max subscription tier.

Persona, a San Francisco-based identity verification company, handles the verification itself. Anthropic says it chose Persona based on the strength of its technology, privacy controls, and security safeguards. The process takes under five minutes, per the support page.

Anthropic is also drawing some clear lines on data use. According to the company, your ID and selfie are held by Persona, not on Anthropic’s own systems. The company says the data will not be used to train models, will not be shared with third parties for marketing, and Persona is contractually limited to using it only to support verification and improve fraud prevention. All data is encrypted in transit and at rest.

That said, Persona is not a company without its own baggage. We’ve covered how researchers raised surveillance-related allegations against Persona earlier this year, and Persona’s COO had to address those claims directly after a lot of backlash. The company denied any ties to DHS or ICE, though it acknowledged working on some government contracts related to workforce account security.

Persona is already used for age verification by platforms like Reddit, Discord, Character AI, and others. So Anthropic is not breaking new ground by picking them as a partner.

OpenAI already has similar measures in place. According to a TechCrunch report from April 2025, OpenAI introduced a “Verified Organization” process that requires a government-issued ID from API developers seeking access to its most advanced models. Apart from that, OpenAI’s own help page also confirms it “occasionally” asks users for a copy of their government-issued ID as part of compliance and security checks.

So it seems like age-verification is becoming an industry standard and shouldn’t come as a surprise. In other news, Claude might soon be capable of building apps much like Loveable natively. You can read more on that here.

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