Client verification for sole traders and Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023

The accounting company that have worked for me before, asked me to send a photo of me holding my passport, to create my tax report for Tax Year 2023/24. They wrote this is legal requirement of a Strengthening Anti-Money Laundering powers part of Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023, and they can't provide services to customers without this photo. I believe that such sensitive and vulnerable data shouldn't be sent by email or messengers and should be kept following the Data Protection Act 2018 rules. The questions are: 1) Is this only way to client verification to send photo holding his passport ? 2) Is there any other way for client verification allowed, that doesn't include sending, receiving and store vulnerable data (e.g. meet face-to-face, zoom call, etc) ? 3) Is this legal to demand such data from sole traders ? (I'm just a sole trader, not a company director or major beneficiary) ?

Hi fluffycat,
Sorry, these are not tax questions and we cannot answer them.
Have you considered changing accountants.
Thank you