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Instagram did this same bullshit to me when I signed up for an account to to follow some photographers. 'Please provide a clear photo of yourself holding your

Instagram did this same bullshit to me when I signed up for an account to to follow some photographers. 'Please provide a clear photo of yourself holding your government issued ID, and a piece of paper with the following code handwritten on it'. No, fuck that for a joke. There's this growing trend of everyone wanting your photo and some ID, and then you have no way to verify that information is being kept securely or used for appropriate reasons.

Santosh83 9y ago
Scarily similar to this: https://imgur.com/a/uQrKn https://imgur.com/a/uQrKn
goialoq 9y ago
Instagram is Facebook
Tarq0n 9y ago
I wonder if some three letter agency is paying facebook to build them the biggest face recognition database in the world.
- JoBrad 9y ago
  No need to get all conspiratorial. Picasa did it before Google, AWS does it now. It’s what people (writ large) want.
  - owebmaster 9y ago
    > No need to get all conspiratorial How I wish large scale surveillance was conspiratorial. Do you really believe in what you say or is it only habit?
  - mitchellberry 9y ago
    Considering nearly every adult provides a photo of higher quality to their respective governments it does seem a tad conspiratorial and like a lot of unecessary effort. Also being a part of the 14 eyes means if the United States wanted my biometrics all they need to do is ask. My country is already moving towards real time cctv identification in airports etc. using biometrics from any issued license / passport.
    - dazmax 9y ago
      This is a pretty good point. If you're the kind of person who has avoided getting a photo ID on purpose, you probably are staying well away from Facebook. The only targets I can think of would be homeschooled teens with no student ID. It does however make Facebook even harder to use for anti-government organizing, though Facebook is already pretty clear about not wanting truly anonymous profiles.
    - otakucode 9y ago
      >My country is already moving towards real time cctv identification in airports etc. Your country must be very gullible and have poor standards of proof. Facial recognition is nowhere near capable of any such feat. Even in cases where the picture is taken under controlled circumstances, with ideal lighting, in good resolution, without extraneous background details, etc, facial recognition is still utterly terrible at matching people against a database of known images. Tell your government to prosecute whatever contracting company lied to them and said such a thing could work for fraud and instead look into technologies that work, like those touchless optical fingerprint scanners that can take a persons prints from several feet away. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if gait recognition had a higher ID rate than facial recognition. Prints and irises are both very good biometrics, facial is less reliable than having a schizophrenic practice phrenology on people one by one.
      - mitchellberry 9y ago
        So I have a friend who worked the security control room of large commercial building in Sydney, would visit him on the weekend and hang out there. This was not an important place, random corp offices of minor companies. These cameras were 360 degree and nicely hidden away, you could zoom in and see the pimples on people across the street at decent resolution. This was 10 years ago, betting against cameras improving since then or in future probably isn't a good idea. Just an anecdote.
  - lootsauce 9y ago
    Seems woefully ignorant to dismiss this concern especially post Snowden revelations. Theses are business records subject to mass surveillance with special access tailored for government agencies with rubber stamp "oversight"
    - JoBrad 9y ago
      I didn’t dismiss it at all. There is a big risk of it being misused by any number of parties, and I agree that we should have additional protections (in our Constitution, perhaps) for personal information that is shared, yet subject to be withheld at our request. But the movement to identify and share information is not being successfully pushed by governments, but by private industry, largely for personal use. That is where my comment came from.
- 659087 9y ago
  Zuckerberg is aiming to become president. They might not even need to pay him (outside of political favors, I'd imagine), because he's probably convinced he's building it for his future self.
  - Cthulhu_ 9y ago
    He doesn't need to; if he / they want to, they can already exert more influence on the world than the US itself does. Facebook's population dwarfs that of the US.
  - drewmol 9y ago
    While I cannot condone or support the recently publicized explicit depictions my opponent claims to the subject of, both myself and the people at Facebook have the utmost respect for user privacy. As always users are encouraged to create locally computed perceptual hash values of the content in question using the publically available SDK tools and submit them to the proper support channel for assistance.
- otakucode 9y ago
  Facial recognition is utter garbage and until every phone has Apple's FaceID stuff, it always will be. The TLAs know this and aren't going to waste efforts in that particular snake oil.
freedomben 9y ago
This is the case with almost all crypto currency exchanges as well. Even in that case, which I can sort of understand (even tho I still hate it), I was pretty off put by it. If Facebook or some other service starts doing this to me, I will use something else.
- will_hughes 9y ago
  Oh, right yes I forgot that. I was going to sign up for Coinbase to demonstrate some stuff as a live demo - buy a few $ worth of BTC and transfer it between wallets/show it in the public blockchain/etc. They wanted me to scan and upload a government issued ID in order to give them money. Nooope, not a chance in hell.
  - sergiotapia 9y ago
    They do that because the US government requires them to keep those records. This isn't Coinbase twirling their evil mostache and scheming about selling your personal data.
    - girvo 9y ago
      It’s pretty much all governments, not just the US. “KYC” regulations are kind of brutal in some ways. Especially when the security of that data comes last to everything else...
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - currymj 9y ago
    coinbase and other exchanges that exchange cryptocurrency for US dollars run into this issue because of Know Your Customer anti-money-laundering laws in the US. I've had to go through the same process when signing up for bank accounts online. why the hell instagram would need this, I have no idea.
    - sitkack 9y ago
benwilber0 9y ago
This is the KYC (Know Your Customer) laws. Online-only banks like Ally and Simple require the same thing. In fact, every bank requires this. If you opened a bank account in-person some years ago you may not remember but they asked you for your government-issued ID card. It's the same thing.
- bricestacey 9y ago
  Instagram isn't a bank
  - drewmol 9y ago
    Not yet... Preemptively fulfilling KYC requirements probably eases the barriers to incorporating financial services into the platform. I'm not a fan of this, just thinking out loud
    - bricestacey 9y ago
      It seems like a stretch to think Instagram is entering the financial services space. Facebook owns Insta and Messenger already offers payments. It's probably more likely that Instagram is using traditional KYC tools, probably developed for other parts of the Facebook ecosystem, to influence other KPIs such as the number of bots in the system. But that's just my own guess as well.
    - nerflad 9y ago
      I didn't have to show ID to create my Paypal or Venmo accounts.
- vinniejames 9y ago
  Pretty far from the same thing buddy, do some research
- CamperBob2 9y ago
  KYC doesn't require a photo, does it?
bogomipz 9y ago
Wow, I am curious was this recently? This is next level bat shit crazy even by FB's own standards.
- will_hughes 9y ago
  From Instagram? Yeah this year, in May. Newly signed up account, hadn't even done anything with it. I don't think I'd even followed anyone.
  - tyurok 9y ago
    I signed up recently, didn't happen. Maybe it's region based? Or did they remove it?
spondyl 9y ago
I was trying to change my email address for the game Black Desert Online upon closing down all of my old Gmail stuff and encountered the same sort of thing! > A photo of your photo ID card, taken in front of today's physical newspaper clearly showing the date, or over your screen showing your open ticket needs to be added as an attachment to the ticket. > Please also ensure that the ID is a valid government-issued document and has not expired. You can see it here: https://blackdesert.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/210745969-Email-Change https://blackdesert.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/210745969-... I decided it wasn't worth it for the cost of my ID being stored with no transparency as to how/where it would end up.
- vadimberman 9y ago
  >> A photo of your photo ID card, taken in front of today's physical newspaper clearly showing the date, or over your screen showing your open ticket needs to be added as an attachment to the ticket. I thought you were being sarcastic, but the page you linked indeed states that. What is that for, a hostage negotiation? Proof that the time machine works? How many people buy physical daily newspapers in this day and age?
  - cafard 9y ago
    Fewer and fewer buy newspapers, but the streets around my office are full of machines offering free daily papers.
darklajid 9y ago
Same thing for me with Battle.Net I moved to Singapore. Their purchases are region locked (and may they burn in hell for that alone). Tried to change my account's country, but that requires submitting your ID and your address, the latter has to be verified by either being shown on the ID or by .. submitting a utility bill or something related. For a game account. For a change that is irrelevant and only matters because of their shitty business practices in the first place.
- shapiro92 9y ago
  That is totally normal, this is for billing and tax issues. Just give an electricity bill.
  - darklajid 9y ago
    No, that's not normal (asking for my ID or address). In fact, I created a new battle.net account. Located in Singapore. No address or government ID needed, I just curse the people at Blizzard everytime I have to log out of the SG account to play a game that is linked to my original (DE) account. So they believe me, without verification or anything, when I create an account in Singapore. They consider me a liar and hold my account hostage before I provide details that I'm not willing to share when I tell them that my existing account should follow me. That is _not_ normal. That's bizarre and stupid. If they'd require this for every account, new or changed, then it would be consistent (but .. I still would think that's not okay and wouldn't create an account with them). Handling these cases differently is just hurting the existing account in good standing. (for the record: I don't have any utility bill, electricity or otherwise. That policy is not only brain dead, it wouldn't even work for me if I wanted to hand over anything like that. Singapore: My utilities are covered by my rent, I don't get bills for that. I don't get any physical bills anyway and literally the only bill I have would be an online mobile bill. Coming from Germany: I get a utility bill (water, electricity) once a year. This whole idea of proving my address is not only utterly stupid, it also seems to expect things to work in ways they don't outside of Blizzard's home country)
    - deleted 9y ago
rmc 9y ago
> There's this growing trend of everyone wanting your photo and some ID, and then you have no way to verify that information is being kept securely or used for appropriate reasons. This is why in the EU there are laws about that sort of thing
beojan 9y ago
Until we get government signed personal digital certificates, it's the only sure way to authenticate that you really are who you say you are. Does Instagram need to be that sure? Probably not.
- otakucode 9y ago
  Terrible idea. When a unique identifier is necessary, it should be minted for that purpose and only for that purpose. There is absolutely no reason, and substantial disincentive, to create any singular identifier that could ever be cross-referenced across disparate organizations/systems/etc. No, you really don't need to be able to find out exactly who voted for your party in the last election and has an income over 6 figures, nor do you need to know how many cancer survivors choose Budweiser. If what you actually need to make sure the person closing an account is the same as the one who opened it, then that is absolutely the only fact which that identifier should be capable of ever being used for.
  - beojan 9y ago
    There are plenty of times you do need to authenticate someone's true identity. If you're opening a bank account, or offering a loan or credit account (of any sort). Personally, I'd go so far as even if you're opening an email or social media account under your purported real name (so someone else can't set up a Twitter or Instagram account pretending to be you). To clarify, given how easily people trust social media, identity verification should probably be required unless it is clearly a pseudonym.
    - otakucode 9y ago
      I think you misunderstood me. I'm not saying being able to identify someone is bad, just that it should be tied to what actually matters. When you're opening a bank account or something, you don't care if that person buys beer, and it makes no sense for the same identifier to be used for both of those things and for a multitude of other random things. That only invites a great deal of trouble. You care about whether they have the collateral they claim or the job they claim and things like that, each of which could have their own unique identifier signed by the employer or similar. At each need for identification, the possible correlations need to be considered and minimized.
ixacto 9y ago
Haha I wonder what they would do if you photoshop yourself into a dprk passport. These systems are a joke.
Chaebixi 9y ago
> 'Please provide a clear photo of yourself holding your government issued ID, and a piece of paper with the following code handwritten on it'. This is literally stuff authoritarian regimes are doing to control their populations.

Santosh83 9y ago

Scarily similar to this: https://imgur.com/a/uQrKn https://imgur.com/a/uQrKn

goialoq 9y ago

Instagram is Facebook

Tarq0n 9y ago

I wonder if some three letter agency is paying facebook to build them the biggest face recognition database in the world.

JoBrad 9y ago
No need to get all conspiratorial. Picasa did it before Google, AWS does it now. It’s what people (writ large) want.
- owebmaster 9y ago
  > No need to get all conspiratorial How I wish large scale surveillance was conspiratorial. Do you really believe in what you say or is it only habit?
- mitchellberry 9y ago
  Considering nearly every adult provides a photo of higher quality to their respective governments it does seem a tad conspiratorial and like a lot of unecessary effort. Also being a part of the 14 eyes means if the United States wanted my biometrics all they need to do is ask. My country is already moving towards real time cctv identification in airports etc. using biometrics from any issued license / passport.
  - dazmax 9y ago
    This is a pretty good point. If you're the kind of person who has avoided getting a photo ID on purpose, you probably are staying well away from Facebook. The only targets I can think of would be homeschooled teens with no student ID. It does however make Facebook even harder to use for anti-government organizing, though Facebook is already pretty clear about not wanting truly anonymous profiles.
  - otakucode 9y ago
    >My country is already moving towards real time cctv identification in airports etc. Your country must be very gullible and have poor standards of proof. Facial recognition is nowhere near capable of any such feat. Even in cases where the picture is taken under controlled circumstances, with ideal lighting, in good resolution, without extraneous background details, etc, facial recognition is still utterly terrible at matching people against a database of known images. Tell your government to prosecute whatever contracting company lied to them and said such a thing could work for fraud and instead look into technologies that work, like those touchless optical fingerprint scanners that can take a persons prints from several feet away. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if gait recognition had a higher ID rate than facial recognition. Prints and irises are both very good biometrics, facial is less reliable than having a schizophrenic practice phrenology on people one by one.
    - mitchellberry 9y ago
      So I have a friend who worked the security control room of large commercial building in Sydney, would visit him on the weekend and hang out there. This was not an important place, random corp offices of minor companies. These cameras were 360 degree and nicely hidden away, you could zoom in and see the pimples on people across the street at decent resolution. This was 10 years ago, betting against cameras improving since then or in future probably isn't a good idea. Just an anecdote.
- lootsauce 9y ago
  Seems woefully ignorant to dismiss this concern especially post Snowden revelations. Theses are business records subject to mass surveillance with special access tailored for government agencies with rubber stamp "oversight"
  - JoBrad 9y ago
    I didn’t dismiss it at all. There is a big risk of it being misused by any number of parties, and I agree that we should have additional protections (in our Constitution, perhaps) for personal information that is shared, yet subject to be withheld at our request. But the movement to identify and share information is not being successfully pushed by governments, but by private industry, largely for personal use. That is where my comment came from.
659087 9y ago
Zuckerberg is aiming to become president. They might not even need to pay him (outside of political favors, I'd imagine), because he's probably convinced he's building it for his future self.
- Cthulhu_ 9y ago
  He doesn't need to; if he / they want to, they can already exert more influence on the world than the US itself does. Facebook's population dwarfs that of the US.
- drewmol 9y ago
  While I cannot condone or support the recently publicized explicit depictions my opponent claims to the subject of, both myself and the people at Facebook have the utmost respect for user privacy. As always users are encouraged to create locally computed perceptual hash values of the content in question using the publically available SDK tools and submit them to the proper support channel for assistance.
otakucode 9y ago
Facial recognition is utter garbage and until every phone has Apple's FaceID stuff, it always will be. The TLAs know this and aren't going to waste efforts in that particular snake oil.

freedomben 9y ago

This is the case with almost all crypto currency exchanges as well. Even in that case, which I can sort of understand (even tho I still hate it), I was pretty off put by it. If Facebook or some other service starts doing this to me, I will use something else.

will_hughes 9y ago
Oh, right yes I forgot that. I was going to sign up for Coinbase to demonstrate some stuff as a live demo - buy a few $ worth of BTC and transfer it between wallets/show it in the public blockchain/etc. They wanted me to scan and upload a government issued ID in order to give them money. Nooope, not a chance in hell.
- sergiotapia 9y ago
  They do that because the US government requires them to keep those records. This isn't Coinbase twirling their evil mostache and scheming about selling your personal data.
  - girvo 9y ago
    It’s pretty much all governments, not just the US. “KYC” regulations are kind of brutal in some ways. Especially when the security of that data comes last to everything else...
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- currymj 9y ago
  coinbase and other exchanges that exchange cryptocurrency for US dollars run into this issue because of Know Your Customer anti-money-laundering laws in the US. I've had to go through the same process when signing up for bank accounts online. why the hell instagram would need this, I have no idea.
  - sitkack 9y ago

benwilber0 9y ago

This is the KYC (Know Your Customer) laws. Online-only banks like Ally and Simple require the same thing. In fact, every bank requires this. If you opened a bank account in-person some years ago you may not remember but they asked you for your government-issued ID card. It's the same thing.

bricestacey 9y ago
Instagram isn't a bank
- drewmol 9y ago
  Not yet... Preemptively fulfilling KYC requirements probably eases the barriers to incorporating financial services into the platform. I'm not a fan of this, just thinking out loud
  - bricestacey 9y ago
    It seems like a stretch to think Instagram is entering the financial services space. Facebook owns Insta and Messenger already offers payments. It's probably more likely that Instagram is using traditional KYC tools, probably developed for other parts of the Facebook ecosystem, to influence other KPIs such as the number of bots in the system. But that's just my own guess as well.
  - nerflad 9y ago
    I didn't have to show ID to create my Paypal or Venmo accounts.
vinniejames 9y ago
Pretty far from the same thing buddy, do some research
CamperBob2 9y ago
KYC doesn't require a photo, does it?

bogomipz 9y ago

Wow, I am curious was this recently? This is next level bat shit crazy even by FB's own standards.

will_hughes 9y ago
From Instagram? Yeah this year, in May. Newly signed up account, hadn't even done anything with it. I don't think I'd even followed anyone.
- tyurok 9y ago
  I signed up recently, didn't happen. Maybe it's region based? Or did they remove it?

spondyl 9y ago

I was trying to change my email address for the game Black Desert Online upon closing down all of my old Gmail stuff and encountered the same sort of thing! > A photo of your photo ID card, taken in front of today's physical newspaper clearly showing the date, or over your screen showing your open ticket needs to be added as an attachment to the ticket. > Please also ensure that the ID is a valid government-issued document and has not expired. You can see it here: https://blackdesert.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/210745969-Email-Change https://blackdesert.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/210745969-... I decided it wasn't worth it for the cost of my ID being stored with no transparency as to how/where it would end up.

vadimberman 9y ago
>> A photo of your photo ID card, taken in front of today's physical newspaper clearly showing the date, or over your screen showing your open ticket needs to be added as an attachment to the ticket. I thought you were being sarcastic, but the page you linked indeed states that. What is that for, a hostage negotiation? Proof that the time machine works? How many people buy physical daily newspapers in this day and age?
- cafard 9y ago
  Fewer and fewer buy newspapers, but the streets around my office are full of machines offering free daily papers.

darklajid 9y ago

Same thing for me with Battle.Net I moved to Singapore. Their purchases are region locked (and may they burn in hell for that alone). Tried to change my account's country, but that requires submitting your ID and your address, the latter has to be verified by either being shown on the ID or by .. submitting a utility bill or something related. For a game account. For a change that is irrelevant and only matters because of their shitty business practices in the first place.

shapiro92 9y ago
That is totally normal, this is for billing and tax issues. Just give an electricity bill.
- darklajid 9y ago
  No, that's not normal (asking for my ID or address). In fact, I created a new battle.net account. Located in Singapore. No address or government ID needed, I just curse the people at Blizzard everytime I have to log out of the SG account to play a game that is linked to my original (DE) account. So they believe me, without verification or anything, when I create an account in Singapore. They consider me a liar and hold my account hostage before I provide details that I'm not willing to share when I tell them that my existing account should follow me. That is _not_ normal. That's bizarre and stupid. If they'd require this for every account, new or changed, then it would be consistent (but .. I still would think that's not okay and wouldn't create an account with them). Handling these cases differently is just hurting the existing account in good standing. (for the record: I don't have any utility bill, electricity or otherwise. That policy is not only brain dead, it wouldn't even work for me if I wanted to hand over anything like that. Singapore: My utilities are covered by my rent, I don't get bills for that. I don't get any physical bills anyway and literally the only bill I have would be an online mobile bill. Coming from Germany: I get a utility bill (water, electricity) once a year. This whole idea of proving my address is not only utterly stupid, it also seems to expect things to work in ways they don't outside of Blizzard's home country)
  - deleted 9y ago

rmc 9y ago

> There's this growing trend of everyone wanting your photo and some ID, and then you have no way to verify that information is being kept securely or used for appropriate reasons. This is why in the EU there are laws about that sort of thing

beojan 9y ago

Until we get government signed personal digital certificates, it's the only sure way to authenticate that you really are who you say you are. Does Instagram need to be that sure? Probably not.

otakucode 9y ago
Terrible idea. When a unique identifier is necessary, it should be minted for that purpose and only for that purpose. There is absolutely no reason, and substantial disincentive, to create any singular identifier that could ever be cross-referenced across disparate organizations/systems/etc. No, you really don't need to be able to find out exactly who voted for your party in the last election and has an income over 6 figures, nor do you need to know how many cancer survivors choose Budweiser. If what you actually need to make sure the person closing an account is the same as the one who opened it, then that is absolutely the only fact which that identifier should be capable of ever being used for.
- beojan 9y ago
  There are plenty of times you do need to authenticate someone's true identity. If you're opening a bank account, or offering a loan or credit account (of any sort). Personally, I'd go so far as even if you're opening an email or social media account under your purported real name (so someone else can't set up a Twitter or Instagram account pretending to be you). To clarify, given how easily people trust social media, identity verification should probably be required unless it is clearly a pseudonym.
  - otakucode 9y ago
    I think you misunderstood me. I'm not saying being able to identify someone is bad, just that it should be tied to what actually matters. When you're opening a bank account or something, you don't care if that person buys beer, and it makes no sense for the same identifier to be used for both of those things and for a multitude of other random things. That only invites a great deal of trouble. You care about whether they have the collateral they claim or the job they claim and things like that, each of which could have their own unique identifier signed by the employer or similar. At each need for identification, the possible correlations need to be considered and minimized.

ixacto 9y ago

Haha I wonder what they would do if you photoshop yourself into a dprk passport. These systems are a joke.

Chaebixi 9y ago

> 'Please provide a clear photo of yourself holding your government issued ID, and a piece of paper with the following code handwritten on it'. This is literally stuff authoritarian regimes are doing to control their populations.