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Comment by dessant | Hacker News Reader

As I understand it developers have to submit a government ID to withdraw their tokens.

https://help.namebase.io/article/usgrydy7da-kyc-restrictions

This is a bit concerning, and it practically negates the privacy claims of the airdrop, unless people only use the tokens to bid on Handshake names. Could you share more details about the documents you're requesting? Which company handles the personal data?

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You're correct. Unfortunately due to regulatory restrictions in the US, we're required to verify accounts before enabling withdrawals and selling HNS for BTC (we're not happy about it either). We work with Cognito and Jumio, which are the vendors that Coinbase, Brex, Airbnb, and many other companies use — so if you've used any of those products you've already used Cognito and Jumio before.

Thanks for the details, I think that sounds reasonable. Do you have access to the documents during the verification process, or are users redirected to the KYC provider to upload them? If you don't have access to the documents, what personal data does the KYC provider return to your company upon successful verification?

I'm curious because I haven't gone through an online KYC process before, and I'd like to understand the risks before claiming the airdrop.

You can see a concrete example of API for KYC here: https://developers.veriff.com/#sessions-sessionid

or specific to Jumio:

https://github.com/Jumio/implementation-guides/blob/master/n...

Essentially all personal data. Generally for these, the name is also sent to other processors, to check against OFAC's Specially Designated Nationals (to see if you are under sanctions in the US).

So if you are in North Korea for example, you may not have access to your funds in practice with the current situation.

It's a rather normal process though. At the end is no point about the GitHub anonymity thing because all users (even European or people from Zimbabwe) have to do the KYC anyway.

Namebase didn’t create the airdrop. You can still claim your coins to a cli wallet if you want, and the cli wallet is pretty easy to use actually.

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