I wanted a blue badge on LinkedIn. To get it, I gave a US company my passport, my face, and my biometric data. Then I read the fine print.

I wanted the blue checkmark on LinkedIn. The one that says “this person is real.” In a sea of fake recruiters, bot accounts, and AI-generated headshots, it seemed like a smart thing to do.
So I tapped “verify.” I scanned my passport. I took a selfie. Three minutes later — done. Badge acquired. I felt a tiny dopamine hit of legitimacy.
Then I did what apparently nobody does. I went and read the privacy policy and terms of service.
Not LinkedIn’s. The other company’s.

  • D_a_X@feddit.orgOPEnglish
    181·
    19 days ago

    When you click “verify” on LinkedIn, you’re not giving your passport to LinkedIn. You get redirected to a company called Persona. Full name: Persona Identities, Inc. Based in San Francisco, California.
    LinkedIn is their client. You are the face being scanned.
    I had never heard of Persona before this. Most people haven’t. That’s kind of the point — they sit invisibly between you and the platforms you trust.
    So I downloaded their privacy policy (18 pages) and their terms of service (16 pages). Here’s what I found. Everything I Gave Them

    For a three-minute identity check, this is what Persona collected:

    • My full name — first, middle, last
    • My passport photo — the full document, both sides, all data on the face of it
    • My selfie — a photo of my face taken in real-time
    • My facial geometry — biometric data extracted from both images, used to match the selfie to the passport
    • My NFC chip data — the digital info stored on the chip inside my passport
    • My national ID number
    • My nationality, sex, birthdate, age
    • My email, phone number, postal address
    • My IP address, device type, MAC address, browser, OS version, language
    • My geolocation — inferred from my IP

    And then there’s the weird stuff:

    • Hesitation detection — they tracked whether I paused during the process
    • Copy and paste detection — they tracked whether I was pasting information instead of typing it

    Behavioral biometrics. On top of the physical biometrics. For a LinkedIn badge.