Is it still safe to update my OS?

You can remove it yourself, Linux doesnt stop you from deleting anything. That’s why this entire identity verification thing is so stupid. It cannot functionality work at the scale they want. Edit: The things that probably won’t work are the websites and services that require some verification related API. But besides that, you own your device, if you are going as far to even use Linux in the first place, you are already in a great spot.