Character AI Age Verification: A
Your kid's driver's license is sitting in some stranger's computer right now. A chat app asked them for it. And your teen scanned it all by themselves. This whole thing started after a boy died. His name was Sewell Setzer, he was 14, and he lived in Orlando. He talked to a chatbot every single night. By the end of this, you'll know exactly what to say no to.
One company got hacked and 70,000 government IDs got out. And people's home addresses got out right along with them.
Sewell Setzer died in February 2024. His mom sued Character.AI and Google. They settled the case on January 7, 2026.
Five different families settled over kids getting hurt the same way. The app only started checking ages afterward, not before.
The app asks your teen for their license. Then it compares that license photo to a selfie of their face. But it never actually figures out how old they are.
So what is that scan really telling anybody?
In February 2024, a 14-year-old boy died. In January 7, 2026, the families settled. And only then did the scan show up.
The write-up said it flat out, in writing. The park keeps a copy of your ID forever. And then the company turns around and sells your address.
There's one age check we know about that actually ran 269 separate checks on people. It checked if they were on watchlists. It flagged them for their politics. None of that has anything to do with age.
Discord itself never got hacked. A company Discord trusted lost everything instead.
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You'd think you could just ask them to delete it. But most companies never tell you a thing.
If someone steals your card, you fix it in one day. But if someone steals your face, it follows you for 400 days. Your teen can't just get a new face. And that map of their face never expires.
When a kid is 13, the app guesses their age wrong by 1.22 years. So a real 13-year-old can scan as 11. And there's nothing you can do to fix that.
A 16-year-old grabs their parent's passport instead. And the scan fails for the totally wrong reason.
Researchers ran into content about grooming kids every 5 minutes. And the scan did nothing to stop that.
NBC News reported that the company got breached. The page calls itself identity protection. That same page lost 70,000 licenses.
A face match only asks one thing. Is this the same person or not? It never once asks how old they are. So the check was never really about protecting your kid.
Never give a chat app your kid's license. If it asks, delete the account.
Ask your teen if any app ever wanted a selfie or their license. Tell them the answer to that is always no. And write down the name of any app that already asked them.
Parents figure a selfie is the safer thing to give. But it hands over the exact same measurements of their face.
Your teen scans their license. A company stores that copy. Then attackers grab the whole pile of them. And your home address goes right along with it.
The CaraComp write-up gets into this even more. It lists every question you should be asking.
The write-up points out the real danger here. Most companies never tell you a thing. And that silence is the whole problem.
If your kid submitted an ID, report it at IdentityTheft.gov, which is a federal site. If it involves your child, report it at ic3.gov. And call your state attorney general's office, not the company.
That one company was holding 70,000 licenses. And every single one had a home address on it. Nobody ever picked that company for themselves.
That scan never protected a single kid. All it did was move your kid's license around.
Ask your teen which apps asked them for this. Tell them no is always the answer. Then delete any account that won't back off.
Your teen could hand it over tonight. Ask them before somebody else does.
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