[debarshri]

Recently, Instagram asked to verify an account I have been using for past 2 year. Spent over $100 on ads.

I felt stupid and embarassed taking my own selfie with a piece of paper with a number written on it. But then I would have lost my account, had to do it.

[GravityisaHoax]

Venmo requested the something similar from me a few years ago for an account with 0 activity. Except they wanted a passport or driver's license with a selfie. This was an account without any bank account or cards attached to it. I hadn't used it to pay or receive any money. But it wasn't a new account. I had for like 3 years and just never used it like I thought I would need to.

I understand needing to verify the identity of people transferring large amounts of money, but it was a ridiculous ask for someone who just wanted it to send a friend 10 bucks for lunch. I just used another app, and my identity is still frozen in Venmo to this day. The silver lining is that no one can open an account with my information to circumvent the freeze, so I'm safe in that respect on Venmo.

[2Gkashmiri]

i used to use linkedin from a different location from my current one. i didn't think about this but when i tried to log in from my present location, it said something bullshit about "security" and now i am forced to upload my passport for verification and they pinky promise to delete the photo after verification. no fucking way

[hellotomyrars]

Facebook decided they wanted my drivers license to verify my account that I wanted to log in to to pull some very old pictures off of it and never think about it ever again.

You have to use the camera on a device, you can’t upload an image file (which just makes things more obnoxious, not any more secure) They tell you they’ll keep the photo stored for a year to better improve their process or whatever other bullshit. You can opt to have them only store it for one month (how nice of them) but when you do that I totally resets the flow of everything so you have to do everything all over again and it makes it seem like you’re stuck in an endless loop of doing that so you’ll just let them keep it for a year.

I caved and did it. There was no time to verify. I was just able to login.

So no, they didn’t need it for any actual verification or security reason. They just wanted the data. It’s almost funny how naked it was.