Claude Now Requires Passport or ID Verification – Anthropic Confirms

Anthropic has updated Claude’s help center with a page titled “Identity Verification on Claude,” indicating that users may be asked to provide a government‑issued passport, driver’s license, state‑issued ID card, or national ID, along with a live selfie for facial matching.

The verification is performed through Persona Identities, a Silicon Valley‑based identity‑verification provider used by companies such as Notion and OpenAI. The process takes about five minutes and requires a physical document and a camera‑enabled device.

Accepted documents are limited to original, unexpired, undamaged government‑issued IDs. The service explicitly rejects copies, screenshots, scans, photos of documents, electronic IDs, temporary paper IDs, and any non‑government credentials; users must present the real document in front of the camera.

Verification may be triggered randomly or according to specific strategies, such as when certain features are used, during routine integrity checks, or for security and compliance reasons. Anthropic suggests that triggers will likely target accounts showing anomalous behavior, suspicious locations, or high‑sensitivity feature usage.

The stated reasons for the KYC rollout are threefold: preventing abuse (e.g., mass‑generated fraud content or phishing emails), enforcing usage policies (e.g., restrictions on minors, political manipulation, CSAM), and meeting legal compliance requirements as AI regulations in the US, EU, and UK increasingly demand traceable identities.

Regarding data privacy, Anthropic notes that submitted IDs and selfies are not stored on Anthropic’s servers but are kept solely by Persona, encrypted in transit and at rest, not used for model training, and only shared with third parties under lawful requests.

For users in China, the requirement poses a significant hurdle because Claude has never been officially opened to the domestic market, and many users rely on indirect access methods. The lack of alternative verification paths means that failure to pass the KYC check will likely render the account unusable, affecting those who use multiple or rented accounts.

Overall, while the verification does not immediately block all users, it signals a broader trend toward real‑name enforcement for AI services, and the window for anonymous API or chat usage may close in the coming years.