Persona Fails on Vertical IDs | mketab📓">Persona Fails on Vertical IDs<br>Mohammed Ketab<br>2026-07-01<br>558 words &bull; 3 min read

A massive number of mainstream platforms are forcing identity verification these days, and most of them have turned to Persona for the job. Putting aside Persona&rsquo;s questionable security record (like the Discord incident), the software has a glaring technical flaw that locks out tons of users.<br>To give some context, I made a LinkedIn a few weeks ago at the suggestion of a friend working in HR. I made all the typical profile updates, used a very reputable email, and had my phone number linked. Randomly, just a couple of days later I get locked out of my account with an ultimatum: verify your identity with Persona or lose access to your account. Despite how immoral this is, there really is no bypassing it, and I want a LinkedIn at this stage of my life for the internship hiring pipeline. Having no other choice if I wanted to actually use the platform, I reluctantly started the Persona verification process.<br>Persona in this case gave me the sole option to use my state ID. Typically other Persona clients allow a passport upload but this was not available in my case. Persona mandates in the UI that ID cards be horizontal. Still, I would feel even less comfortable providing them my passport.<br>I’m in Michigan, which, like nearly every other state, issues a vertical ID for all persons under 21.<br>Persona in no way allows you to input or scan a vertical ID despite LinkedIn only needing me to be 16+.<br>The camera overlay literally forces a landscape bounding box, and does not accept vertical IDs placed in that box.<br>No conventional service bars under 21s from making an account.<br>So now I, and likely thousands of others1, remain locked out, despite no wrongdoing, and due to Persona&rsquo;s amateurish scanning process.<br>This is a sad state of affairs for such a dominant company in the space.<br>It Gets Worse<br>This is where the blame shifts from Persona&rsquo;s tool to LinkedIn&rsquo;s broken flow.<br>Rather than sticking to my guns and just existing without a LinkedIn account, I tried again.<br>Now, keep in mind, I never even submitted my ID for verification.<br>Every single time I would scan the QR code to start the verification process, LinkedIn would not let me in.<br>I could not even get to the Persona screen anymore.<br>I then tried to initiate via the app, which took me through the most broken series of captchas several times, just to not work.<br>Every time I retried I would get some random, vague error with no code, or locked out from further attempts.

LinkedIn support has not responded to my very first request weeks ago asking them to review this.<br>I am glad that I do not have much invested in this platform.<br>I would be outraged had I lost access to the entirety of my professional network on the whim of some algorithm that decided I was sketchy.<br>The internet is trending towards identity verification, and with that erosion of freedom comes the iron rule of the algorithm.<br>No more humans in the loop, algorithm said no, and that is the end of it.<br>https://devforum.roblox.com/t/persona-id-verification-flat-out-does-not-work-with-vertical-ids-or-drivers-licenses-and-is-locking-12-million-us-adults-out-of-verifying/3875313 ↩︎