Creador expone vulnerabilidades en registro obligatorio de celulares con identificación falsa

A video posted to TikTok in early September laid bare a fundamental weakness in Mexico's mandatory cell phone registration system: the government's identity verification process could be defeated in five minutes with a borrowed ID card, basic photo editing software, and a computer.

Adrián de la Peña, a content creator, documented the entire procedure step by step. He accessed the official registration portal, requested a verification code via text message, and began uploading identification documents. To test the system's defenses, he took a screenshot of someone else's voter credential, overlaid his own photograph using standard editing tools, and submitted the altered image. The automated system accepted it without hesitation. When the facial recognition and biometric movement verification ran, they cleared the submission immediately. "It's this easy to fool Mexico's cell phone registration or linking system," de la Peña said in the video. "It took me five minutes, a computer, a phone, and a credential that isn't even mine. The system marks the modification as valid."

The video accumulated 3.8 million views, nearly half a million positive reactions, and thousands of comments. What emerged from that comment section was a portrait of widespread distrust. Hundreds of users reported successfully completing the registration process using credentials belonging to deceased relatives or family members, ostensibly to protect their own privacy. The implication was clear: if people were registering lines under the names of the dead, the system had no meaningful way to prevent it.

The mandatory registration program was implemented during the current federal administration with the stated goal of linking every active cell phone number to a citizen's CURP—Mexico's unique taxpayer and identity number. The intent was sound: create a registry that could help combat fraud, track criminal activity, and protect consumers. But de la Peña's demonstration suggested the execution had serious gaps. The system's reliance on automated facial recognition and biometric checks appeared to have no human review layer, no secondary validation, no mechanism to catch a doctored image that passed the initial algorithmic screening.

In the video's description, de la Peña raised a distinction that cut to the heart of the problem. "The idea of linking the cell phone number isn't bad," he wrote. "The problem is the government's actual capacity to guarantee the security of that data and the reliability of the registry itself." He also flagged a practical vulnerability: printed copies of ID cards are routinely available in public establishments, and those copies could be altered and submitted without triggering any alarm.

The reaction across social media reflected a broader anxiety about data security and government oversight in Mexico. Citizens who had already completed the registration found themselves wondering whether their information was truly protected, or whether the same vulnerabilities that allowed de la Peña to slip through with a fake credential meant their own data could be misused just as easily. The video did not spark calls to abandon the registry entirely, but it did crystallize a specific fear: that the government had built a system to collect sensitive information without building the safeguards necessary to keep it safe.