In the US it is becoming common for federal services to require ID.me verification. I’ve never really had a problem with social security requiring ID verification. I do have a problem with data portals requiring it.
this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2026
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Identifying yourself for official business on a government site is not the same as providing official ID to a random picture sharing site. Pretty much every service has had a leak which required heaps of people to change their trusted password. How would you fix this when they leaked your full official identity?
The theme of this post is “what things online would I be okay giving my government ID to.” The author did not mention government services in the article, so I brought those up and differentiated which government services I think are reasonable for ID verification. In the US, social security is basically a retirement fund and a huge target for scammers. I’m willing to verify there or for my taxes (although those should just be done for me; different argument). A data portal eg census data is not something I am willing to verify my ID for because it should be public. US trademarks, for example, now require ID verification for an account. An account gives expands some access on the website and allows the ability to file. If I file a trademark, I am fine with verifying my identity. If I make an account, I don’t need to verify my identity until I file.
I didn’t mention picture sharing websites because I agree with the author’s stance.
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(3 replies)
It's just a new "Think of the children", only worse than going after backdoors in cryptography.
Now it's "OS-level" identity checks, which means TPM+secure boot hardware lockout.
This is just more child abuse disguised as "parental rights". It becomes clear how harmful this is when you realise that not all parents have their childrens best interests at heart (even if they think they do and sincerely mean well) and allowing parents to censor the information children have available to them allows them to censor information that the children learn only too late to prevent harm.
I have no issue with an online service knowing my age for as long as that's all they know and will ever know about me.
As a Texan oil baroness I feel confident with myself being known to the algorithm and it tracking my habits of dropping snakes into police stations, as is our tradition as reminder to not be treaded upon.
The issue is that any software is a blackbox when running.
There is no way for a user to know what code is running let alone verifying that a specific code is actually running on a device, combine that with a sector that keeps wanting more data.
Banking?
you open the acct with id. no need for the app to verify age.
"identity or age"