I can't speak to your specific use of Anthropic's models, but I find it interesting that people will identify themselves (to set up and pay for an account) and provide all sorts of personal (and often sensitive if not confidential) information to these models on a daily basis, but balk at a 5-minute identity verification.
The National Public Data breach alone exposed the social security numbers of potentially upwards of 100 million Americans. Numerous companies have literally "all" of your personal data and you never did business with them/gave it to them directly.
It's not right but the identity theft cat is out of the bag, which is why precautions like credit freezes, are recommended for all Americans.
So many people have internalized an anonymous audience that they are performing to in terms of what they think the anonymous audience wants to hear that they can't tell what is their own actual thoughts and motivations.
That is why the motivation changes two weeks later and the ID gets uploaded.
> But most likely all the inputs together only add to a rough identity hash.
You literally provide your name, email address, address and credit card number when you create an account and subscribe.
The identity verification they're doing is for legal purposes. Even if they have a way to take your name and IP address and figure out who you are with near-absolute certainty (including through the use of third-party databases), they're doing this so they have a legally-defensible process by which identities were established.
Not if you are using through your employer.
> they're doing for legal purposes
The USA is becoming a Banana Repulic. Having grown up in one, you end up learning that "the law" is never meant to be used for the benefit of the people but only to give the veneer of legitimacy for the authoritarian abuse by those in power.
“To my friends, anything; to my enemies, the law”: https://www.undp.org/latin-america/blog/graph-for-thought/%E...
I don't recall Anthropic's payment systems, but I use Paypal wherever supported. I don't think Paypal sends my address, but am not sure. I'm pretty sure they don't send the CC information.
And often, not even the name (e.g. have often had people use my CC to buy stuff (with my permission)).
Also, I still routinely buy stuff from one service that thinks I'm in a state I haven't lived in for over 20 years, because that's the address I provided back then.
So no, generally, sending your payment info doesn't equate to sending them my address.
Most people understand or at least accept that in order to facilitate payments and a company to follow various laws that are generally understood as "good for all" (like AML and tax avoidance), but require ID to access is not the same.
It is identical to accepting to paying for National Parks car pass or camp ground fees but protesting access fees. Not the same thing.
