I’m guessing that the answer is yes, but maybe someone with 1st hand experience or any sort of expertise may want to weigh in?

I really just want to order cookware from a German company that no longer ships to the US (given the toddler tantrums that have replaced our trade policy, I don’t blame them). I think reshipping companies in the EU all have to get some sort of ID verification to combat credit card fraud (side note: I live in the US so I can hardly throw stones but WTF EU? It seems like a terrible privacy law enacted to protect banks?).

Anyway, if I want to use the service, this is the deal:

We take the protection of your data very seriously, especially when it is about your identity data. Our partner for verifying your identity is Veriff, a well-known and trusted KYC provider. They will securely store your data and only transmit the status of your verification to our system. Of course your data will never be disclosed to third parties.

Feels yucky, but maybe I’m being paranoid? Pretty much everyone in my country has already been boned by Experian and Social Security leaks already 🤷🏾

  • xmrlist@lemmy.world
    3·
    8 hours ago

    The 3 years is almost certainly anti-money-laundering record keeping, not Veriff being greedy. Once a company runs a KYC check it usually has to keep the record for years, and a GDPR deletion request doesn’t override that. So whatever you upload, assume it sits there until the retention period runs out.

    Before going that route I’d try two things: email the German shop and ask if they’ll still ship to the US for a surcharge (a lot of smaller shops paused US shipping because of customs paperwork, not because they refuse outright), and check whether a forwarder without ID checks works for a one-off order of cookware. For one pan, uploading a passport scan to a third party feels like a bad trade.

    • xtr0n@sh.itjust.worksOP
      1·
      3 hours ago

      The company is pretty big so I doubt that they would make an exception, but there is no harm in asking.

      I don’t think there are any commercial forwarders in Germany that don’t collect IDs. I guess I could try to find one that uses a better company than Veriff but I think I just need to give up on getting a replacement lid for my pressure cooker :(

      I was messaging with a student that does forwarding as a side gig. She has rave reviews on Reddit but she only communicates via Reddit chat and was weird when I asked if there was a backup means of contact. Since Reddit bans people for no reason randomly and could unilaterally decide that I need to somehow verify my account at any time, any answer other than “here’s an email addy, only use it if you can’t contact me on Reddit” is kinda shit. And since I literally logged onto Reddit for the 1st time in years just to message the package forwarder, I don’t have confidence that I won’t somehow lose access over the time it takes to work out an agreement and actually get yhe product shipped to them and to me.

      I wonder if package forwarders in Korea and Japan have also added verification requirements? I’m gonna run out of good sunscreen eventually (thanks RFK!) and preventing wrinkles without looking like a ghost is more of a personal non-negotiable.

      • xmrlist@lemmy.world
        2·
        2 hours ago

        For a replacement lid it might not need the German shop at all. Spare parts often go through a different channel than the retail store: most of the big German cookware brands have a US distributor or an official parts page, and their customer service will usually tell you which US dealer stocks the part if you give them the model number from the base. eBay.de sellers that use eBay’s international shipping are another option, since the seller ships to a domestic hub and you never deal with a forwarder.