Every time a service rolls out one of these verification mechanisms, I really, REALLY hope they remain true to their word that age verification is only being done locally, and nothing is being sent out to a remote server… and they never change those rules in some privacy policy update.

k-ID is a company I haven’t personally heard of, but I know other companies like LinkedIn use companies such as Persona for Identity verification. Several months ago, I had a spat with LinkedIn as part of making an account where they tried to force me to scan my Government ID as well as a copy of my face to a third party company called Persona. The only difference is, while they claim the scans were only going to be stored temporarily for verification purposes and then deleted, the simple fact that they are storing anything is about as far from “On Device” as you can get. Needless to say, I did not scan my ID to LinkedIn, and I had to force them to delete the newly created account.

What I’m most particularly bothered by is how many of these verification services require a mobile phone and a mobile app to do.