I was on the phone to British Gas complaining that I suddenly stopped receiving paper statements. The agent on the phone got really helpful all of a sudden when I told him I needed the paper bills for proof of identity.

Turns out he had just gone through the whole debacle himself. He had to show a bank statement, but he only has an online account. Went to the bank to get a statement printed and stamped, and whoever he went to turn it in to still refused it because it hadn't been mailed.

Personally, I don't want to give the BA any easy reason to reject my visa applications, I get all the mailed proof of address I can.

Wow, I guess you just proved all those people saying they couldn't get such papers accepted are clearly lying because you've never had a problem.

The fact that they are so easily manipulated is the reason they are most often not accepted as proof of identification, regardless of criminal law. It could be totally legal and it would be in the best interests of banks/businesses to not accept them due to possible liabilities.

Used to work in retail, sold credit obo Barclays bank - we were told not to accept printed copies of bank statements but I heard stories of people asking customer to log into online banking live.

Chase in the US rejected my recently expired US passport as secondary ID, but accepts my non-expired Indiana vehicle registration, a document laser-printed on ordinary copy paper at the BMV with no graphical elements other than form boxes that'd be trivial to counterfeit. So it's probably safe to say that "difficulty to counterfeit" is not a criterion for secondary ID at Chase (nor, apparently, is mismatched mailing address, because my vehicle isn't registered at the address on my primary ID).