alt Hacker NewsNot to mention it introduces different threats to safety when additional personal information of yours is made available to an entity you cannot audit in an industry famous for redefining privacy to mean "your data or derivatives of your data can be infinitely shared and sold and resold with little-to-no consequence".
It introduces the threat of being personally unmasked to anyone and everyone is introduced in the event the verification system (or a component thereof containing your personal info) is hacked and data dumped to the public.
It introduces the threat of your data being sold around with the "ground truth" of your identity and photo associated with it.
And even if these threats aren't realized....it happens often enough with related companies that the uncertainty will forever be there.
The threat of public humiliation.
The threat of losing your job.
The threat of losing your social connections.
The threat of personal assault.
All of these come to mind as concrete threats that have played out when someone has been doxed by a malicious person.
And now the risk and consequence of doxing is made so much worse when your government ID is associated with chats that are ostensibly private.
I’ve mentioned before publicly I got randomly shadowbanned before on linkedin with these invasive “security” checks for no reason. It ended up costing me money because I mostly at that time used that network to actually network and looked for consulting opportunities. and to this day i have no real way to know what they know about me or how they’re using the facial data i did provide. There was nothing from my pov that should have been flagged, but due to the unreliable way they flag users and the invasive id verification checks (that dont work) involved, I had to self opt out of the platform, which is really stupid to me given the fact i was a pro paying user for 10+ years. and all these platforms have the capability to easily do that. whether its triggered by something benign or malicious is irrelevant - the tech simply doesnt work. the people that control how it works have questionable motives. So i must then ask the question, why? you are getting at the reason I think.