Tell HN: You now need a government id in order to create an Anthropic account
I don't know if this is totally new, but I just can't believe it. I remember that they requested a telephone number 2 years ago, which was already way too much. But now they forward you to a scetchy website called withpersona.com and want you to make a selife with your passport.
I can't even get that far in trying to sign up for Claude. Years ago, I told Constant Contact's (a/k/a Constant Spammer) legal department to block all emails to "animats.com", which was an option hidden away in their terms of service.
Back then, they were just a spam service provider. Now, legit companies use them for "deliverability". Anthropic, which has some kind of co-marketing thing with Constant Contact, seems to use them for verification emails. Signup verification emails can't reach me. So I can't even start sign up.
Instead, I bought Kagi and OpenRouter and use Claude through those.