[davzie]

This is really easy to fake though and employers kind of have to take your word for it that the documentation you provide is real. I'm assuming a digital ID scheme will just bring all the data together and make it instantly verifiable for employers. I would normally be suspicious about this sort of thing but I do think a lack of a single entity bringing all the data together is limiting us technologically in the UK. What Estonia have done is awesome, it'd be cool for us to work toward something like that!

[davzie]

I have had many jobs and scenarios where I need to provide proof of residency and I have never once had a share code like you mention @mytailorisrich like this. The reality is that it doesn't happen like this. Usually about 6 months into your job someone forgets you haven't done the necessary checks and reaches out for you to send a couple of sketchy photos of your IDs so they can upload it to their HR system and forget about it.

[mytailorisrich]

No, it is not easy to fake.

As @vinay427 mentioned this is most digital now so you get a "share code" from the Home Office, which you provide to your prospective employer. In turn they go to the Home Office's website, input the code, and should get your picture, details, and entitlement to work.

That's on top of having a passport to go with it.

[gambiting]

If you're a foreigner on a visa(or an EU settled status resident), yes. If you are a British person(or pretending to be one) then you just need to show your employer your British passport(or one of several other acceptable documents), and obviously faking a picture of a passport is pretty trivial. And since employers generally don't have access to the system that can verify passports they take your word on the document being valid.

[mytailorisrich]

As someone who's just got their new British passport, faking the 3 pictures on it, and the whole passport itself, does not look trivial at all...

I think it is much, much, much more common to have dodgy employers/landlords who do not carry out the checks at all because they are fine exploiting illegal immigrants, and no type of ID card would solve that...

[gambiting]

>>As someone who's just got their new British passport, faking the 3 pictures on it, and the whole passport itself, does not look trivial at all...

A lot of employers just want a photo/scan of a passport. I'm not saying making a whole fake passport is easy, it's obviously not - but modifying a picture of a passport is not exactly rocket science.

[rhetocj23]

Yeah most employers just take photocopies of the ID for record keeping purposes and that's it.

[physicsguy]

Most people are paid cash in hand if they're working illegally realistically. I'm not sure that would change. But in enforcement it might since you could theoretically make it a legal requirement to produce the ID, that's the norm in many other countries.

[rhetocj23]

Nah this is over come with data.

E.g. if a firm is doing better than its peer group with less employees on the books, something is suspect.

[gambiting]

Honestly the biggest problem is that government requires companies to verify identity of their employees but doesn't give them any means to do so. There was a recent case where a fish and chip shop owner was fined £40k for employing someone without a legal right to work in the UK, and the owner said the guy literally showed him his British passport, turns out it was a fake - but how was he(the business owner) supposed to know, if the government doesn't allow him to check this?

[mytailorisrich]

Articles in this case all say that the illegal worker only provided a photocopy of his alleged British passport.

I.e. the employer did not properly and seriously carry out the checks as he didn't ask for the original, hence the heavy fine.

"The business did not see the original copy of the man’s passport, which its owner, Mark Sullivan, said was a “clerical error”" [1]

As I commented previously it is hard to counterfeit a modern British passport in a way that looks genuine and obviously any checks require sight of the original passport...

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/jul/22/surrey-chipp...

[KaiserPro]

THats only if they ask for it.

I changed job recently, and they just wanted a passport.

[nemomarx]

Why do they have to take your word for it? if you present a few forms of id (drivers license, etc) can't those be checked against a central DB?

is someone forging physical ID cards and also getting them real numbers somehow?

[Symbiote]

The people who have to do the check (businesses and landlords) don't have access to the system to check those numbers, or any training on what a real identify card or passport looks like.

A relative had this problem when renting out a spare room. How was she supposed to verify the Colombian passport shown to her?