Getting Ahead of Anthropic's Face Scans: A Three-Surface Backup Guide for Claude Code

This episode is about one thing going around hard right now: the supposed “face recognition, possible mass account bans” on July 8.

I left a teaser at the end of the last video, so today I’ll do this properly. First, why I get to speak on it: I’ve had 15 accounts banned, and I never lost a byte of data. And since March of this year, across my whole team plus friends—twenty-odd accounts—not one has been banned. So I’ve earned the right to weigh in.

First, don’t panic: July 8 is not “everyone gets face-scanned”

The version circulating about July 8 is “KYC for everyone”—you log in and it asks you to upload ID and scan your face. Is any of that true?

I think a lot of tech creators have gotten more and more absurd. A piece of news drops and they can’t wait to describe it in the most extreme, most exaggerated language they can find. The more anxiety it produces, the more traffic it gets. It’s the same as the hawkers I heard at train stations as a kid—“so-and-so has died,” “here’s what happened to some celebrity”—a pure waste of your time.

So what is July 8, really? It’s the day a new version of Anthropic’s consumer privacy policy takes effect. The official wording is that identity verification applies to “few use cases,” and that you “may” see verification when using certain features—it uses “may.” It does not say everyone has to verify, and it does not say failing verification means a ban.

Nobody can really say what the mechanism will look like after July 8. So the safest move is to back up your data ahead of time: get your conversations, memory, and projects back into your hands, so you can switch to another tool and also keep working on a new account if you do get banned.

The one crucial thing to understand: your data comes in two kinds

As someone who has had 15 accounts banned without losing any data, I think the most important thing to understand here is this: Claude Code data comes in two kinds.

• Local data—a ban can’t take it. The conversations in the desktop client and the terminal on your own computer, all your session history, all your memory files—those live locally. They aren’t tied to an account and they aren’t encrypted; any account can read them.
• Cloud data—it dies with the account. If you use the web chat, or Remote inside the web code mode, that data is unrecoverable the moment the account is banned. No backup, and it’s simply gone.

Get that one point and everything after it follows. The entire purpose of backing up is to turn as much “cloud data” into “local data” as you can, and then copy the local data somewhere safe.

How to resume on each of the three surfaces after a ban and a new account

From my own testing, each of the three ways of working has its own path back:

Terminal (CLI)—the way I recommend most. If you use Claude Code in the terminal, you barely have to think about bans at all. Log in with a new account and resume your conversations to keep going.

Desktop client. Sign out and back in and the conversations in the left sidebar look like they’re gone. Don’t worry, they aren’t. Reopen the directory you were working in before and the whole session list loads right back. Handy.

Web cloud conversations. If you were using cloud conversations on the web and want them pulled back locally, you need the claude --teleport command to save a complete conversation as a local file before you can keep using it.

A step back: switching to another tool catches you just fine

I use both Cursor and Claude Code, so I tested the migration while I was at it. In Cursor I can point it at the directory where Claude Code stores its conversations. Cursor can also scan your local files, list every candidate directory, and let you read your old Claude Code conversations and memory—it even inherits your existing skills wholesale. They built an adapter specifically for this.

Which proves the point again: local data isn’t encrypted. So even if the official subscription really does get hard to use after July 8, you can run on Cursor for a good while.

There’s always a way through

I’ve always believed the old saying: when the cart reaches the mountain, a road appears. Even if July 8 really does mean KYC for everyone, there will be a way to keep working with some new set of tools. It’ll just cost a bit more than it used to.

Rather than being led around by headlines selling anxiety, spend ten minutes now getting your data back into your own hands. That’s it for today. See you tomorrow.

Source: EP0048_audio.mp3 · ASR model gemini-2.5-pro (chunked parallel) · full text of the original recording

[00:00] In this episode let me talk about this July 8 business everyone’s on about, the face recognition that might get your account banned. In an earlier video I also said I’d had 15 accounts banned. But since around March, my whole team and my friends—20-plus accounts—haven’t had a single one banned. So first let’s look at July 8. The rumor going around is KYC for everyone: when you log in it makes you upload your ID, and then makes you do a face scan, right? Is this thing actually true? I think these tech creators are getting more and more ridiculous. It’s not even “the sky is falling” or “this is insane” anymore—a piece of news comes out and they can’t wait to take it

[00:25] and describe it in the most extreme, exaggerated language they can, because the more anxiety it creates, the more traffic it gets. It’s like when I was a kid at the train station, all those hawkers shouting so-and-so has died, such-and-such celebrity did whatever—every bit as scummy as those newspapers. A pure waste of time. So let’s look at what July 8 actually is. July 8 is the date Anthropic’s consumer privacy agreement, the new agreement, takes effect. The official wording is that identity verification is only for a few use cases—certain specific situations.

[00:51] And what it says is that you may see verification when you use certain features. It uses “may.” It’s not saying everyone has to go through verification, and that if you fail verification you all get banned. That’s not it. But what exactly the mechanism will be after July 8—none of us can say right now. So we can actually prepare in advance: take these conversations of ours, these memories of ours, these projects of ours, and back them up. That way we can switch to other tools, or if we do get banned and get a new account, we can keep going. As someone who’s been through it—

[01:16] I mean me, I’ve had 15 accounts banned, and I didn’t lose one bit of data. I think there’s one very important thing to understand here: our data—Claude Code’s data—comes in two kinds. One is called local data, the data a ban can’t take away from you. The other is called cloud data. How do you tell them apart? The conversations from the client and the terminal on our local machine, all of that session history, and all of our memory files, our memories—those live locally. But if you used the web—

[01:41] chat, or the web version’s code mode, the remote one, that data you can’t get back. If your account gets banned and that data isn’t backed up, it’s just gone. From my testing, what I’ve seen is: if you’re using Claude Code in a terminal—which is also the way I really recommend—then you don’t have to worry about this ban business at all. As long as you log in again with a new account, all your conversations just need a resume and they carry right on. And if you’re using Claude Code in the desktop client, when the account signs out and you sign back in,

[02:06] the conversations in the left sidebar are gone too. But don’t worry, those conversations haven’t disappeared. Just go back in, pick the directory you were working in before, and the sessions on the left all load up. That’s a pretty handy way to do it. But if you were using the cloud conversations on the web and you want to pull them back locally, you need this command—claude --teleport—to save a complete conversation as a local file so you can keep using it. I also ran a test, because I use both Cursor

[02:31] and Claude Code. In Cursor I can tell it which directory our Claude Code conversations are saved in, and Cursor can also use its local file-scanning feature to list every possible directory and let you read your earlier Claude Code conversations and memories. It actually includes those earlier skills too—all of it can be inherited completely. So they built an adapter for it. Which tells you the local data isn’t encrypted, so you don’t need to worry: if it really does get hard to use the official subscription after July 8, you can lean on Cursor for a while.

[02:56] And I’ve always believed there’s a way through—you cross that bridge when you come to it. Even if July 8 really does mean KYC for everyone, I’m sure there’ll be a way to keep using some new set of tools—it’ll just cost a bit more than it used to. That’s it for today, see you tomorrow, bye-bye.