Anthropic announced the rollout of identity verification for Claude, requiring users to prove their identity in certain cases. The company stated that verification helps prevent abuse, enforce usage policies, and comply with legal obligations.
The verification process uses Persona Identities as the technology partner, selected based on the strength of their security safeguards and privacy controls. Users will need a valid government-issued photo ID and a camera to complete verification, which typically takes under five minutes.
Accepted ID types include passports, driver's licenses, state or provincial ID cards, and national identity cards from most countries. Anthropic does not accept photocopies, screenshots, scans, digital IDs such as mobile driver's licenses, non-government IDs like student or employee badges, or temporary paper IDs. The ID must be issued by a government, clearly legible, undamaged, and include a photo.
AnthropicAnthropicAnthropicAnthropicAnthropicAnthropic serves as the data controller and sets rules for how data is used and retained. Persona processes the data on Anthropic's behalf but holds the ID images and selfies on its own systems, not on Anthropic's infrastructure. Anthropic can access verification records through Persona's platform when necessary—for example, to review an appeal—but does not copy or store the images itself.
Persona is contractually restricted in its use of the data. The company can only use verification information to provide and support the verification service and to improve fraud prevention capabilities. Persona must protect data with industry-standard security controls and delete it according to retention limits set by Anthropic and applicable law. All data in transit and at rest is encrypted.
Anthropicsaid it will not use verification data to train its models. The company collects only the minimum information needed to verify identity and does not share verification data with third parties except where legally required to respond to valid legal processes. Verification data does not go to marketing or advertising partners.
If verification fails due to blurry photos, unreadable documents, expired IDs, or technical issues, users have multiple retry attempts within the verification flow. If attempts are exhausted, users can contact Anthropic through a support form.
Accounts may be banned after verification for repeated Usage Policy violations, account creation from unsupported locations, Terms of Service violations, or under-18 usage. Users who believe their account was wrongly banned can submit an appeal form for Anthropic's Safeguards team to investigate.