Top all-time · #3769
withpersona.com
Company blog · withpersona.com/blogsecuritywebprogramming
withpersona.com is the company blog at withpersona.com, writing about security, web and programming. Since 2021, 21 different Hacker News readers have linked it 25 times, most often “Challenges of identity verification – and how to solve them”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (16) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Persona's customer list, privacy policy, DSAR form and incident post-mortem, mostly in threads on identity verification, age checks and the OpenAI and Discord controversies.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 16 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- /blog/post-incident-review-source-map-exposure-non-production-subdomain3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2026-02-24
- /dsar3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-02-24
- /customers/openai3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-04-23
- /customers3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-02-17
- Challenges of identity verification – and how to solve them2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-05-21
What Hacker News says?
I suspect their data collection might not be legal in the EU. https://withpersona.com/legal/privacy-policy To me it looks like an extremely aggressive data pump.
Comment linking /legal/privacy-policy
on “OpenAI dropped the price of o3 by 80%”Submitted Designing an app builder with server-driven UI as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> The OS could require the parent to manually update it. How is their age verified? At some point one of two things is required: 1) A promise that the user is a certain age - Which puts us exactly where we are 2) Official identification is used to verify age - Which creates a PII nightmare That's it. There's only those two options. You may not believe #2 is going to be a privacy nightmare but we're already seeing it…
Comment linking /customers
on “Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill”Submitted Tips for balancing conversion and risk during customer onboarding as a story · 1 points
HN discussionJust requested deletion through this form: https://withpersona.com/dsar
Comment linking /dsar
on “OpenAI, the US government and Persona built an identity surveillance machine”Submitted Challenges of identity verification – and how to solve them as a story · 1 points
HN discussionIsn’t this just normal KYC (for account opening). What am I missing? https://withpersona.com/customers/openai
Comment linking /customers/openai
on “OpenAI, the US government and Persona built an identity surveillance machine”According to Persona's damage control article[0], the subdomain had "onyx" in its name because that's the internal code name for the project, and it's named after the pokémon Onyx. No connection to Fivecast ONYX. [0] https://withpersona.com/blog/post-incident-review-source-map...
Comment linking /blog/post-incident-review-source-map-exposure-non-production-subdomain
on “OpenAI, the US government and Persona built an identity surveillance machine”https://withpersona.com/customers/openai Persona's side of the story.
Comment linking /customers/openai
on “OpenAI, the US government and Persona built an identity surveillance machine”In response to a data request, Persona says: Hi there, Thank you for reaching out to Persona. Please note that Persona primarily operates as a "service provider" or "processor" for its customers. We act as a "business" or "controller" only for specific services, such as identity verification for LinkedIn, FoxCorp, and Reusable Persona. To learn more about how Persona manages your personal data, please refer to our p…
Comment linking /dsar
on “OpenAI, the US government and Persona built an identity surveillance machine”Going to copy paste my comment from today's other thread[3] that linked to this: Note also there's a direct response from Persona's security team here[1], and a lot of back and forth from Rick on Twitter[2]. [1]: https://withpersona.com/blog/post-incident-review-source-map... [2]: https://x.com/Persona_IDV/status/2025048195773198385?s=20 [3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47136036
Comment linking /blog/post-incident-review-source-map-exposure-non-production-subdomain
on “OpenAI, the US government and Persona built an identity surveillance machine”Question about Bluesky and Persona integration. As i understand there are plans to delegate government id verifications to Persona? ( https://withpersona.com ) Any confirmation? Comments?
Comment linking /
on “Bluesky CEO Jay Graber is stepping down”Just a heads up. Looks like they have an additional step in the form of some kind of biometric identification if you want access to the new gpt-image-1 from the API: https://withpersona.com/customers/openai https://help.openai.com/en/articles/10910291-api-organizatio...
Comment linking /customers/openai
on “OpenAI Image gen is now available in the API”I did a quick search and it looks like A LOT of business use it (not 100% on the source,but it gives an idea ). Also looking at Persona's website, that includes OpenAI: `OpenAI uses Persona to screen millions of users each month with zero friction` [1] https://data.landbase.com/technology/persona/ [2] https://withpersona.com/customers/openai [3] https://withpersona.com/customers
Comment linking /customers
on “Discord Rival Gets Overwhelmed by Exodus of Players Fleeing Age-Verification”To report back on this, I contacted the various email addresses given in OP's article. For people with GDPR rights, this link helps make a DSAR (though interestingly the US and many other countries are also available from the country dropdown, maybe they follow these rules everywhere): https://withpersona.com/dsar This of course brings up the problem of having to verify the ID of the person who's requesting their ID…
Comment linking /dsar
on “I Verified My LinkedIn Identity. Here's What I Handed Over”Maybe something like this: Verify the person’s identity via a service such as Stripe Identity[0] or Persona[1]. Then check the business owner via a service such as https://www.secstates.com/ and see if the names match. [0] https://stripe.com/en-se/identity [1] https://withpersona.com/
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: How to verify a business (users will register their business on my app)”More than just that, they also ship your data off to unnamed third-parties, who have no restrictions on how they use your information, or how long they keep it. https://withpersona.com/legal/idv-privacy-policy I've wondered how companies like Palantir amass the datasets for their mass-facial recognition offerings, guess this is how.
Comment linking /legal/idv-privacy-policy
on “Ask HN: LinkedIn removes your profile as precaution?”Check out the two vendors of mobile solutions, they want a photo of your state ID. Here's Persona's page about it. https://withpersona.com/blog/what-is-drivers-license-verific... My understanding is that if you are under 18, you can get away with uploading a selfie.
Comment linking /blog/what-is-drivers-license-verification
on “US Bill Mandates On-Device Age Verification”Note also there's a direct response from Persona's security team here[1], and a lot of back and forth from Rick on Twitter[2]. [1]: https://withpersona.com/blog/post-incident-review-source-map... [2]: https://x.com/Persona_IDV/status/2025048195773198385?s=20
Comment linking /blog/post-incident-review-source-map-exposure-non-production-subdomain
on “Discord cuts ties with Peter Thiel-backed verification software”For anyone interested, they published the post-mortem of the referenced incident: https://withpersona.com/blog/post-incident-review-source-map...
Comment linking /blog/post-incident-review-source-map-exposure-non-production-subdomain
on “Discord cuts ties with Peter Thiel-backed verification software”Good question. Quite a few, publicly. https://withpersona.com/customers
Comment linking /customers
on “Discord cuts ties with Peter Thiel-backed verification software”Hey Sherekia, Not sure if this is going to be helpful, but here are some tips around reducing risk / onboarding https://withpersona.com/blog/identity-verification-a-crucial... https://withpersona.com/blog/top-challenges-identity-verific...
Comment linking /blog/top-challenges-identity-verification
on “Tips for balancing conversion and risk during customer onboarding”
