The age verification service "Persona" requires an entirely unredacted government-issued identification to grant verified age status for VRChat.

I find this unacceptable. In my case, in exchange for VRChat receiving verified age information, Persona receives my:

Name, first and last,

Address,

Driver's License Number and class,

Sex,

Height,

Weight,

Eye colour,

Hair colour,

Signature,

and barcodes that can be used to find the same or more information about me.

All so VRChat can have the one data point on the card they care about: Date of Birth.

I will make concessions for the use of Height, Weight, Eye colour, Hair colour, and the photo on the ID with an accompanying self photo for the sole purpose of verification.

The balance of what is required versus what is ultimately used is egregiously skewed. And while VRChat's contract with Persona stipulates that any identification data obtained by Persona must be deleted upon completion, there is comparatively little risk to Persona keeping the wealth of information illegally. Should a breach occur, users that have had their personal data exposed would be left fighting for the rest of their lives against Identity theft and fraud, while Persona would likely only be served a monetary fine. The risk versus the reward is far too unbalanced against the user.

As for how likely it may or may not be that Persona is holding such data illegally, I would like to make note that Persona is based in the United States of America, and you don't have to look very hard to find the state of professional accountability for wealthy companies backed by powerful people in that country.

Suffice to say that I do not trust Persona with my identification information, and am upset that the age verified features will be unavailable to me due to this.

I implore VRChat to consider other avenues of age verification that do not require such extreme overreach of personal data collection.

Regards

-Aranethon