For bad actors, Discord will likely only become a bigger target as more sensitive information is collected worldwide, users now fear.
It’s no surprise then that hundreds of Discord users on Reddit slammed the decision to expand age verification globally shortly after The Verge broke the news. On a PC gaming sub-reddit discussing alternative apps for gamers, one user wrote, “Hell, Discord has already had one ID breach, why the fuck would anyone verify on it after that?”
“This is how Discord dies,” another user declared. “Seriously, uploading any kind of government ID to a 3rd party company is just asking for identity theft on a global scale.”
Many users seem just as sketched out about sharing face scans. On the Discord app sub-reddit, some users vowed to never submit selfies or IDs, fearing that breaches may be inevitable and suspecting Discord of downplaying privacy risks while allowing data harvesting.
Who can access Discord age-check data?
Discord’s system is supposed to make sure that only users have access to their age-check data, which Discord said would never leave their phones.
The company is hoping to convince users that it has tightened up security after the breach by partnering with k-ID, an increasingly popular age-check service provider that’s also used by social platforms from Meta and Snap.
However, self-described Discord users on Reddit aren’t so sure, with some going the extra step of picking apart k-ID’s privacy policy, while attempting to understand exactly how age is verified without data ever leaving the device.
“The wording is pretty unclear and inconsistent even if you dig down to the k-ID privacy policy,” one Redditor speculated. “Seems that ID scans are uploaded to k-ID servers, they delete them, but they also mention using ‘trusted 3rd parties’ for verification, who may or may not delete it.” That user seemingly gave up on finding reassurances in either company’s privacy policies, noting that “everywhere along the chain it reads like ‘we don’t collect your data, we forward it to someone else… .’”