"nothing is stored after verification" It is. Through malice or incompetence, it almost certainly is. Again, Tea hack. And that's far from the first time. The UK government, and/or the private contractors tasked with running this now have possibly the largest blackmail resource ever created. They would have to be complete morons to actually follow through and delete the treasure trove they're being offered.
My understanding is that there's a lot more than Discord to it as well, x for one being completely gutted until you're identified. It's almost a truism at this point to point this out, but this is very obviously about control over a populace, not moral crusading or protecting women or children. But if you're able to navigate it, glad to hear it. We all have to make do with some crazy things atm.
Viewing post in Day 3: Holding Pattern. "Allowing" sales again. comments
I got Proton just incase. The free version is enough to get past it. It uses something called K-ID to verify things. It's pretty much just an AI that scans the image shown and instantly says yes or no, no data is stored. But it can also be fooled by images off google and shit since its AI. I find it more interesting that other countries want to do it too, like america.
"Interesting" is one word, yes. The one advantage we have over here is that at least it's not a full, national thing: individual states (about half) have passed laws demanding it. So it's a whole patchwork of different rules, systems etc. Which is good, because it makes it more likely to fail in the long term.
As for the tech being used in the UK, I'm not an expert, and I'm not sure the full information on it is out yet anyway. "AI" can also mean many, many things (The simple movement rules for enemies in 90s FPS games were also called "AI"). But if we're talking actual neural-net style AI, it seems unlikely that it's running client-side inside the browser. Especially for people with old systems or ancient smartphones, this would be extremely slow or impossible. Much more likely it's running server-side. And if it is, by definition the images have to leave your system to be processed. If they leave, you're fucked, doesn't matter what they say. But again, a lot of unknowns. Someone would have to analyze the traffic coming out of the browser/discord etc and see what's actually being transmitted.
BUT, regardless, glad you've got a functional VPN up and running. Hilariously, the fallout from this may be that a lot of people finally learn what a VPN is, and why it's important. I'm sure you knew already, but a lot of ordinary people probably have no idea. And once they've learned, they can't unlearn.