r/privacy

i don't want to participate, but also don't want to lose my job.

the company i contract for (i'm an employee of a third party) has stated that we will have limited company access if we don't sign up for their identity assurance - upload an id plus random periodic face scans (not sure if this is done secretly or if it would lmk when it's happening).

but as the deadline to "sign up" nears, the emails are getting more and more intense and are now saying that multiple failures to "sign up" could result in disciplinary action (up to termination).

like, i get that most places in the us are at-will and you can get fired for anything, but this feels so gross to me. i shouldn't have to choose between my privacy/online security and a paycheck.

Having a Robinhood account for many years, I hated this shoddy company and its CEO for a long time but at least from GME.

Yesterday I wanted to transfer out a small amount of ETH I have in there and all of a sudden I got the request they need to take a selfie, extract biometrics which will be processed and stored (officially for a crazy 3 years (!), unofficially probably indefinitely) by a third party company (Persona).

I do not consent to this and refuse to do this. Seems I am not alone and there have been furious posts already.

It seems there is only Illinois which has a law against this terrible practice; I am Californian resident and privacy laws conveniently exclude this case.

Before continuing: I am not mad that I have to verify my identity, I am mad that I am forced to do this via this shoddy system instead of in a conventional way. At the very least, there should be an alternative.

It does seem that there is one way out that should work in principle: Create an account with an actual broker instead of a trash company and then use ACATS to transfer out all funds and close Robinhood. To my understanding, the the identity verification should then go via the new broker.

One downside is it costs $100 (but it would be worth to me).

The unknowns is that I have a tiny amount of BTC and ETH as well as some fractional shares in it which would need to be liquidated first. This is not an issue per se but I am worried this would somehow trigger this biometric madness again before I get the chance to use ACATS.

Has anyone used ACATS to close Robinhood account without caving into this privacy violation?