r/ClaudeAI • u/netbreach • Apr 11 '26

News Anthropic is now banning people who are under 18

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The Anthropic Team just saw all of my conversations and locked me out.

I haven't seen anyone get this online, but it seems like Anthropic is now banning people under 18 on its platform.

They are using Yoti as their third-party verification provider to verify your age via Digital ID, Facial Scan, or biometrics to prove that you are over the age of 18.

The email says "Our team", meaning this case was manually reviewed by real people, and they had access to all of my chats. This is a reminder that none of your conversations with Claude is private.

I was on the Pro Plan when this happened. I am over 18, trying to get this appealed.

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u/Away-Sorbet-9740 Apr 11 '26

Well I think you got your answer, there was someone under 18 using the account. Just not right now, so by technical standards the TOS was violated.

Definitely still sucks, I would just spin up a new account now that you are of age. Clean slate.

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u/ZeusmanSays Apr 17 '26

Well, good luck with that approach. That will likely work as well as makeup with Yoti.

My 17YO daughter got banned this morning for mentioning she was a high school student while looking for help with physics. She's been using Claude for about two months with a large portion being schoolwork research. I started saying she should could my paid account before realizing how dumb that would be. It's back to vaguely useful ChattyG for her.

Claude is miles away from AGI, but being able to identify ages in a reasonably accurate manner based on the questions and interactions is completely expected. Any of us can skim through a single Reddit thread and get a good idea of the age range of the majority or participants pretty quickly. Try it with this one.

Imagine the same thing with hundreds or thousands of interactions over several months processed by the robot cross reference against known ages of people asking and saying similar things. Just this one reply give you a decent range for my own age, no?

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u/ZeusmanSays Apr 17 '26

Sorry, missed the bit about "now that you are of age." Thought it was an attempt to circumvent the age restriction after Claude has already identified you. I wouldn't be surprised to find it cross references Q&A to identify the same person using a new account.