Comment by Aurornis
1 day ago
This page has been up since April: https://web.archive.org/web/20260415064244/https://support.c...
I see a lot of comments linking this to Fable or implying that the existence of this page is triggering them to cancel.
You should know that this help page and their ID process are not new. This page has been up for many months. It gets discussed from time to time, including in past HN posts.
The identity verification support page says 'updated this week' but that is just an update to the appeals process. https://www.diffchecker.com/HuY8QMOX/
There was, however, also a change to the privacy policy, effective July 8, 2026. See https://privacy.claude.com/en/articles/10301952-updates-to-o... It now says:
"Verification Data: In certain circumstances, we may ask you to verify your age or identity. If you choose to do so, data we will collect includes, depending on the method: an image of your government-issued identity document and the information appearing on it (such as your ID number and date of birth); your image in photo or video form, facial geometry templates (which may be considered ‘biometric data’ in some jurisdictions); and the result of the verification (for example, whether your age meets the applicable threshold)."
The previous (Jan 2026) version did not have this.
An Anthropic employee suggests on X that this is just so users flagged for potentially fraudulent activity have a way to get their account reinstated and it is unrelated to the Fable rollout.
https://x.com/trq212/status/2068793885535694858
At least I (living in the EU) received an email at work on the 18th that had this section under "What has changed":
2. Verification Data. As part of our efforts to ensure the security of our services, we may ask you to verify your age or identity. We have described what information we collect and how we collect it.
Anthropic’s -updated- privacy policy allows age and identity checks for Claude consumer users starting July 8th.
Incorrect. The policy already allowed age and identity checks. You can find cases of people being flagged for ID checks across social media like Reddit, or even in this thread on Hacker News. This is not new.
The updates were for the appeals process.
Anyone can just go to the updated privacy page and see you're being dishonest
https://privacy.claude.com/en/articles/10301952-updates-to-o...
Thanks. I went looking for how to actually verify myself as I would love to get access to Fable again. This post confirmed it, it's not relate to Fable at all and has been around. Thanks.
nice to know it!!!
Did anthropic bar the use of any of their models behind an ID process back in April?
The answer seems to be yes [0]. Although I think it's important to state The Web Archive link proves that the recent Fable banning was not the catalyst for the page being linked.
Will Fable be back behind an ID verification step? I wouldn't be shocked if that happened. However, this specific support page and the ID veridiction process is not new. It is currently enforce.
It appears (but I can't be certain and don't think it's in bad faith) that many people are under the assumption that this is a result of the Fable banning. As a datapoint, I did some form of KYC verification to use OpenAI's cybersecurity platform a few weeks ago.
To be clear: I still think this is an important discussion.
[0]: https://old.reddit.com/r/ClaudeCode/comments/1smpjg8/well_iv...
Edit: truthbe above pointed out there was a privacy policy change.