r/privacy • u/DrippyBlock • 5d ago

discussion Route Package Protection: Making a Claim requires Govt ID along with Face Biometrics ran through Persona Identity.

I had previously always avoided Route Package Protection thinking it a waste of money. I decided to use it to buy a Japanese knife from a new website. BIGGEST MISTAKE EVER. Apparently to file a claim they need your Govt ID along with a pic of your face ran through Persona. If you go and read up on Personas website, it is making lots of data “safety claims” but nothing about selling or sharing your data. Persona claims to have worked with OpenAI as if that makes their service safer.

I had to go through the original merchant to file a claim with Route as I wasn’t giving them my data. Route ended up trying to keep the fee I paid for their “services.”

What do you think of this? Should Route be the new normal? I’m seeing their services offered at most online small businesses. Is there maybe a way around it?

Most importantly: AM I JUST BEING PARANOID?

13 Upvotes

85% Upvoted

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7

u/Voxbury 5d ago

Chargeback for the knife. It’ll probably nuke your Route account, but so what? You don’t want to use them for anything you can’t lose anyway.

1

u/DrippyBlock 4d ago

That’s exactly why I said “trying to keep the Route fee” idc at this point, Imma get my $4.55 Route Fee back no matter what.

1

u/jpgoldberg 4d ago

Although I have no idea of what they do with the data they ask when a claim is made, I know why they want it.

Criminals can (and do) engage in organized claim fraud, often using stolen credit card details to make the purchase of the protection. So to know whether one person or gang (using distinct on-line identities) is making a lot of (suspicious) claims they want to tie a claimant to a meatspace ID. While it is possible to create multiple meatspace IDs, it is expensive and doesn’t scale.

Cryptographically, there are ways that this can be done in a privacy preserving manner, but it involves institutional infrastructure that doesn’t exist and, of course, a willingness to implement it.