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Identity verification on Claude

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Re: Identity verification on Claude

#751

Post by data-ottawa »

Phelinofist wrote: post #332
data-ottawa wrote: post #154

The US is really shooting itself in the foot here. The restrictions on LLM models like Fable has created a viable international LLM market where it was difficult to justify investment two weeks ago. As a non-US citizen Opus 4.8 is the best American LLM I will ever have access to. That's no longer up for debate or question. Each month that I pay Anthropic is now a depreciating value -- I'm paying for models I'll never…

> As a non-US citizen ... > My next step is exploring OpenRouter and other models May I suggest using Cortecs.ai then? OpenRouter is US-based as well and since you have been bitten by this already perhaps it's really time to change course? :)

Thanks for the suggestion, I am looking into it, it looks promising and I like that the pricing model is very upfront

Re: Identity verification on Claude

#752

Post by ElProlactin »

rglullis wrote: post #742
ElProlactin wrote: post #741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am not asking you "what the courts would say", I am asking you personally: you really don't see a problem in normalizing a world where people can only conduct business if they subject themselves to give away personal data? Companies like Meta and Google collude with media/publishers/online service providers to track you across the web and use your data to target you for advertising even when you aren't registered…

> Companies like Meta and Google This is some weird whataboutism, and it doesn't answer my question. > Anthropic asking customers who voluntarily choose to do business Anthropic is changing the terms. It used to be until last week that ID is not required. Now it is. Some of these customers are now reconsidering their relationship, and it seems you are here saying they should just accept it without a second thought, b…

> Anthropic is changing the terms. It used to be until last week that ID is not required. Now it is.

The Anthropic page related to ID verification is not new. It existed in April and had some minor changes made last week.

https://www.diffchecker.com/HuY8QMOX/

We can disagree, but please don't misrepresent the facts: new customers are not being required to verify their ID by default, nor are existing customers being contacted en masse to do so. ID verification is being used with some customers and it appears this is primarily related to account suspensions that are typically due to usage patterns, fraud concerns, etc.

> Some of these customers are now reconsidering their relationship, and it seems you are here saying they should just accept it without a second thought, because "this is what other companies do it anyway".

I'm not saying anything of the sort. What I am saying is that I find it odd to base a decision to close a Claude account on the basis that asking for ID verification represents an assault against privacy.

Even though Anthropic says that its ID verification is not related to Mythos/Fable, in our discussion, I have pointed out that as a US company, Anthropic could be required to comply with various export controls that are implemented under well-established and perfectly-legal export control regulations.

It is also perfectly normal for companies to require ID verification for some customers under certain circumstances to address legitimate usage and fraud concerns.

Re: Identity verification on Claude

#753

Post by pbgcp2026 »

ai_fry_ur_brain wrote: post #341
JimDabell wrote: post #6

OpenAI also has this kind of check. What is especially bad is that if you fail the verification process, they won’t let you retry – you are permanently locked out from the top models. They aren’t clear about this upfront during the process, so make sure the lighting is good when you scan your ID! https://help.openai.com/en/articles/10910291-api-organizatio...

Why did you provide an ID to use an LLM... You're a mark

This is downvoted unfairly - "this guys fucks" :-) Indeed you attracted attention.

Re: Identity verification on Claude

#754

Post by rglullis »

ElProlactin wrote: post #752
rglullis wrote: post #742

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Companies like Meta and Google This is some weird whataboutism, and it doesn't answer my question. > Anthropic asking customers who voluntarily choose to do business Anthropic is changing the terms. It used to be until last week that ID is not required. Now it is. Some of these customers are now reconsidering their relationship, and it seems you are here saying they should just accept it without a second thought, b…

> Anthropic is changing the terms. It used to be until last week that ID is not required. Now it is. The Anthropic page related to ID verification is not new. It existed in April and had some minor changes made last week. https://www.diffchecker.com/HuY8QMOX/ We can disagree, but please don't misrepresent the facts: new customers are not being required to verify their ID by default, nor are existing customers being c…

> new customers are not being required to verify their ID by default

If they want to use Mythos, they need to provide the ID. It has become a two-class service.

> I find it odd to base a decision to close a Claude account on the basis that asking for ID verification represents an assault against privacy.

The decision does not have one specific reason. For example, I closed my account when they stopped allowing usage of OpenCode with a regular subscription. Some other people are now asking if the service they are getting is really worth it and if they should support a company which actively working towards this two-class system.

Re: Identity verification on Claude

#755

Post by [deleted] »

LPisGood wrote: post #166
halJordan wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's almost certainly just bad engineering/bad business. Not to say it wasn't an active choice, I'm sure it was. It just shows how extreme the power imbalance is between end users and big business that they have 0 desire to do things correctly and end users have 0 impact on correcting that thinking.

OpenAI has notoriously terrible engineering. Look no further than the numerous Reddit threads and YouTube videos about people trying to give them money for their services and being denied. Users routinely have to try a number of credit cards, a number of web browsers, a number of devices, and a number of physical locations. I’m not talking about sketchy prepaid cards from weird banks on a VPN in a country the United…

[deleted]

Re: Identity verification on Claude

#756

Post by ElProlactin »

rglullis wrote: post #754
ElProlactin wrote: post #752

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anthropic is changing the terms. It used to be until last week that ID is not required. Now it is. The Anthropic page related to ID verification is not new. It existed in April and had some minor changes made last week. https://www.diffchecker.com/HuY8QMOX/ We can disagree, but please don't misrepresent the facts: new customers are not being required to verify their ID by default, nor are existing customers being c…

> new customers are not being required to verify their ID by default If they want to use Mythos, they need to provide the ID. It has become a two-class service. > I find it odd to base a decision to close a Claude account on the basis that asking for ID verification represents an assault against privacy. The decision does not have one specific reason. For example, I closed my account when they stopped allowing usage…

> If they want to use Mythos, they need to provide the ID. It has become a two-class service.

You have no inherent, God-given legal right to access Mythos. Once again, the US government (and in particular the executive branch) has a broad and well-established legal authority to regulate advanced technologies under national security and export control regulations.

If you want to buy, say, the most advanced NVIDIA chips, you can be subject to verifications as well because these are subject to export controls.

> The decision does not have one specific reason. For example, I closed my account when they stopped allowing usage of OpenCode with a regular subscription. Some other people are now asking if the service they are getting is really worth it and if they should support a company which actively working towards this two-class system.

Anthropic is a private company. It is allowed to decide how to provision its service, and make changes to its service. This has absolutely nothing to do with "Surveillance Capitalism".

You have the right to vote with your wallet, which you have done. If enough people make the same decision, Anthropic will likely have to reconsider its decisions. That's capitalism, is it not?

Re: Identity verification on Claude

#757

Post by rglullis »

ElProlactin wrote: post #756
rglullis wrote: post #754

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> new customers are not being required to verify their ID by default If they want to use Mythos, they need to provide the ID. It has become a two-class service. > I find it odd to base a decision to close a Claude account on the basis that asking for ID verification represents an assault against privacy. The decision does not have one specific reason. For example, I closed my account when they stopped allowing usage…

> If they want to use Mythos, they need to provide the ID. It has become a two-class service. You have no inherent, God-given legal right to access Mythos. Once again, the US government (and in particular the executive branch) has a broad and well-established legal authority to regulate advanced technologies under national security and export control regulations. If you want to buy, say, the most advanced NVIDIA chip…

These are a lot of rationalizations for you to justify the actions of a company whose CEO talks a lot about ethics, but when push comes to shove acts like any other corporate drone.

Also, you are talking a lot about what Anthropic can do but completely evading to actually say what you think they should do. It tells me that you know how reprehensible their ethics are, but for some reason you refuse to reject them.

Re: Identity verification on Claude

#758

Post by ElProlactin »

rglullis wrote: post #757
ElProlactin wrote: post #756

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they want to use Mythos, they need to provide the ID. It has become a two-class service. You have no inherent, God-given legal right to access Mythos. Once again, the US government (and in particular the executive branch) has a broad and well-established legal authority to regulate advanced technologies under national security and export control regulations. If you want to buy, say, the most advanced NVIDIA chip…

These are a lot of rationalizations for you to justify the actions of a company whose CEO talks a lot about ethics, but when push comes to shove acts like any other corporate drone. Also, you are talking a lot about what Anthropic can do but completely evading to actually say what you think they should do. It tells me that you know how reprehensible their ethics are, but for some reason you refuse to reject them.

We've had an interesting back-and-forth about identity verification but it seems that you don't really care about that issue.

It seems that you just don't like the way Anthropic is run, and a focal point of that is that you're unhappy you can't access Fable and Mythos.

To be clear: the US government issued an order that required Anthropic to suspend access to Fable and Mythos by any foreign national. The company had to comply or it could face significant penalties. According to the company, the only way it could comply with the government order was to suspend access to everyone.

The ID verification page being discussed here has been around since before this order was issued. Like many companies, Anthropic may ask some customers for ID verification, primarily to prevent fraud and abuse. ID verification is not required to sign up, and existing customers are not all being asked to perform it.

Frankly, I think a lot of these companies are ethically-challenged, but not making the latest and greatest models available to everyone who wants them and complying with legal government orders are not the strongest arguments about their ethical shortcomings.

Re: Identity verification on Claude

#759

Post by simoncion »

redserk wrote: post #507
simoncion wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Right now, this has become a risky decision that can tank my business overnight. If your business-critical systems rely on SAAS that doesn't have a solid SLA and breach-of-contract provisions that more than cover the damages in the event, you've made "a risky decision that can tank [your] business overnight". If the software your business depends on can't run indefinitely without getting permission to operate from…

Anyone doing product integrations should recognize it’s a perpetual risk but why stick to the platform that will require US citizenship demands for future models especially when there are other labs with reasonably comparable performance that don’t require this? Anthropic didn’t have to beg for the government to deem their models a security crisis.

> ...especially when there are other labs with reasonably comparable performance that don’t require this?

This access restriction could be

1) A legitimate concern about capabilities.

2) A hype-generation scheme entered into by both the Federal Government and Anthropic.

3) Pettiness.

If we're in situation #1 or #3, then there are no other LLM providers that provide comparable services that are safe from this.

If we're in situation #2... well, I guess how safe you are from this is a factor of how desperately the company needs "wau, look how scary our software is!1!1" hype.

Re: Identity verification on Claude

#760

Post by rglullis »

ElProlactin wrote: post #758
rglullis wrote: post #757

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are a lot of rationalizations for you to justify the actions of a company whose CEO talks a lot about ethics, but when push comes to shove acts like any other corporate drone. Also, you are talking a lot about what Anthropic can do but completely evading to actually say what you think they should do. It tells me that you know how reprehensible their ethics are, but for some reason you refuse to reject them.

We've had an interesting back-and-forth about identity verification but it seems that you don't really care about that issue. It seems that you just don't like the way Anthropic is run, and a focal point of that is that you're unhappy you can't access Fable and Mythos. To be clear: the US government issued an order that required Anthropic to suspend access to Fable and Mythos by any foreign national. The company had…

> it seems that you don't really care about that issue.

Not in the particular. What I care about is the concentration of power and having to live in a world where a handful of corporations fully dictate how everyone should work.

> you're unhappy you can't access Fable and Mythos.

Not at all. I don't personally care. You can find me on record saying that I'd rather work with local models that are "dumber" but can simply assist me through a process, instead of outsourcing all my thinking to a huge LLM.

> Frankly, I think a lot of these companies are ethically-challenged

But you are still sticking by them, aren't you? Why?

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