[phillmv]

You mean, they needed something other than your birth date, birth place, real name, current residence, work history, current job, name of your parents, cousins, grandparents, not to mention the rest of your graph, to correlate you to a database somewhere?

[rglover]

Yep. Technically I could lie about all of that, but a gov issued ID is 100% factual and has my photo. Also, this suggests requiring a birth certificate in some situations which is even more extreme.

[ahoyhere]

The only thing FB has from me that is real or accurate is my birthday. All the other things you listed are either totally false or out of date. (Then again, I don't "friend" my family… IRL or online.)

Until now-ish (or the near future), FB had no way of verifying that, or forcing me to!

[pasbesoin]

How do you connect? If you aren't actively and intelligently taking precautions, they may well have enough network address history to be fairly definitive.

Also, do you block their widgets on other sites/pages?

Not that I disagree with the "Big Brother" concerns that this "Ihre Papiere, bitte." activity raises.

P.S. Aside from government(s), of what value is a proven identity to commercial interests? Being able to prove that you/they are targeting exactly who they want.

Hmm... Amongst other things, I understand that process servers are already attemtping to use FB as a accepted means of delivery. And I've read that debt collectors are using accounts having profile pictures of bikini clad young women, in order to successfully "friend" those they wish to hound.

All sorts of value to "proven" identities...