Top all-time · #9094
vmfunc.re
Personal blog · vmfunc.re/blogsecurity
vmfunc.re is a personal blog at vmfunc.re about security. Since 2026, 8 different Hacker News readers have linked it 11 times, most often “OpenAI, the US government and Persona built an identity surveillance machine”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-02-24, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (8) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Investigative technical posts on Persona, the identity verification vendor, including analysis of its front-end code and data sharing with governments. Commenters use them as the primary source on the topic.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 8 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
lockpicking but for computers
Most-linked posts?
- OpenAI, the US government and Persona built an identity surveillance machine3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2026-02-18
- /blog/persona-22 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-02-25
- /blog/persona2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-02-21
What Hacker News says?
The author has published part 2 of the series... def worth the read: https://vmfunc.re/blog/persona-2
Comment linking /blog/persona-2
on “OpenAI, the US government and Persona built an identity surveillance machine”Submitted OpenAI, the US government and Persona built an identity surveillance machine as a story · 93 points
HN discussionFor what it’s worth, Persona claims to not work or interact with Thiel. https://vmfunc.re/blog/persona-2
Comment linking /blog/persona-2
on “Age Verification as Mass Surveillance Infrastructure”Submitted OpenAI, the US government, and Persona built an identity surveillance machine as a story · 18 points
HN discussionThere are some great looking websites here! I like https://vmfunc.re/
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Most beautiful personal blog UI you have ever seen?”Submitted The watchers, pt. 2: the correspondence as a story · 2 points
HN discussionPeople who found this post interesting may also find this blog post about Persona a good read as well: https://vmfunc.re/blog/persona/ tl;dr Persona shares your identity data directly with the federal governments of the US and Canada and likely is sharing data/works with ICE on the same.
Comment linking /blog/persona/
on “I Verified My LinkedIn Identity. Here's What I Handed Over”Persona do not seem to be competent guardians of such a trove of private information. https://vmfunc.re/blog/persona
Comment linking /blog/persona
on “I Verified My LinkedIn Identity. Here's What I Handed Over”pt. 1: OpenAI, the US government and Persona built an identity surveillance machine https://vmfunc.re/blog/persona/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47140632
Comment linking /blog/persona/
on “The watchers, pt. 2: the correspondence”And his follow up here: https://vmfunc.re/blog/persona-2
Comment linking /blog/persona-2
on “Discord cuts ties with Peter Thiel-backed verification software”The referenced write-up based on the Persona front end code is here: https://vmfunc.re/blog/persona I definitely recommend reading this primary source before drawing conclusions about the code as most of the secondary reporting is quite low quality.
Comment linking /blog/persona
on “Discord cuts ties with Peter Thiel-backed verification software”