Discord to start assuming all users are underage unless they prove otherwise

Don't want Discord to start treating your account like it belongs to an underage kid? Then you'd better be willing to fork over some PII – just months after the company's age verification partner had such data stolen.  Starting with a phased rollout in early March, Discord is going to put all new and existing users into a teen …

[Anonymous Coward]

If your deeply worried about this, you should cancel your Nitro right now.

[may_i]

Hitting them where it hurts would appear to be our only option. If they think my payment for Nitro isn't good enough to prove I'm a grown up and ask me for ID, then an alternative will be found for many communities.

[may_i]

Nitro cancelled. I'm sure the new corporate management is keen to see how many others are doing the same.

[Sunset]

Just did after five years.

[MashedPotato]

Hell No

I feel the discordant vibes of my cognitive dissonance manifested by the dispair of sharing my passport with a disreputable donkey.

[Neil Barnes]

Re: Hell No

Simple. Perform a spelling and grammar analysis - a good one, not the MS office rubbish - on the text written. That should easily isolate the more, er, mature of us.

We could call the policy something snappy: Can't spell? Can't play!

[ICL1900-G3]

Re: Hell No... spelling test

As any fule kno...

RIP Nigel Molesworth

[Anonymous Coward]

Won't help protect anyone

All this will do is force any adult flagged by the system to either submit ID or go through their nebulous "age recognition" video selfie, both of which may actually store info if you're in the UK according to their own support page.

"Important: If you're located in the UK, you may be part of an experiment where your information will be processed by an age-assurance vendor, Persona. The information you submit will be temporarily stored for up to 7 days, then deleted. For ID document verification, all details are blurred except your photo and date of birth, so only what's truly needed for age verification is used."

There is no way to opt out of this, or know whether you've been opted in. There's equally no chance to see whether your personal data has actually been deleted, as tens of thousands of users found out last year after data was leaked online showing their IDs hadn't been deleted. Discord doesn't offer other methods of verification allowed under the UK's Online Safety Censorship Act, such as MVNO checks (UK mobile operators have been required for years to place adult web filters on mobile data connections unless users submit ID), Open Banking (theoretically more private as they can simply provide a yes/no to whether the person is of the required age) or credit card checks (a one-off transaction of a small nominal amount that gets refunded, since you must be 18 to get a credit card in the UK).

Those who disagree with the system will find ways around it when these checks inevitably become mandatory to use the service at all, or give up on using it altogether - which I suspect would please governments a lot more than the vague idea of their citizens being "safe".

[Boris the Cockroach]

Re: Won't help protect anyone

I have a beef with steam that it wants me to prove I'm over 18 by storing my CC number on their systems.

The fact that I've bought ALL of my games on steam with a CC has no bearing, neither the fact the account is 23 yrs old(god I feel old now)

But we must protect the children........ who've all got VPNs and cheerfully accessing all the pr0n they want

[Paul Hovnanian]

Re: Won't help protect anyone

"neither the fact the account is 23 yrs old"

That just means you are old enough to have a kid. Who got hold of your CC number and is now trying to open a social media account with it.

[Mr.Dodel]

Re: Won't help protect anyone

Steam asks if you want to save these details, you can opt not too, it does not force you to save them to prove anything.

Gabe is the light in all this mess.

[Aaiieeee]

Get each user to talk into their mic for 5 seconds.

If its squeaks its a child.

Seriously though, they must have so much metadata to infer my age from voice chats, the channels I'm in, how I type, the way I use Discord itself etc. that they cannot seriously ask me to 'prove' I am not a child.

Whats the upshot? Any swearing gets censored?

[ChoHag]

Re: Get each user to talk into their mic for 5 seconds.

> Whats the upshot? Any swearing gets censored?

Teenage boys don't have to see boobs if they don't want to.

Yeah I know.

[Paul Hovnanian]

Re: Get each user to talk into their mic for 5 seconds.

"If its squeaks its a child."

Autotune. Just knock an octave off. I'm sure by now there are A.I. voice modulators. Just pick James Earl Jones from the menu.

[Bluck Mutter]

DIC - Data Industrial Complex

So my 96 yo Mum died last year and thus my sister and I are selling her modest little townhouse.

As part of the real estate process we needed to undergo Anti Money Laundering verification which sounds real grand but is (if you do it yourself) simply providing a certified copy of an ID and bill showing your address. That's all the law requires: proving you are who you say you are.

For whatever reason, most/all real estate agents in my country outsource this to a 3rd party. The 3rd party used by our real estate agent used a web app where you took a photo of either your drivers license or your passport then provide a short video of your face and "AI" would do the match and then as a "trusted" government partner, get the address associated with the ID from a government database.

All very simple and 99.9% of rubes would do this, including my sister.

I said fuck off cause I care about my privacy such that I don't have a smart phone and all camera's and mic's on my linux PC's are hard disabled (so technically not possible to verify). Other stuff includes running origin ublock/ghostery and noscript when browsing (if a site won't work then it wasn't worth visiting) , using startmail email, using burner email addresses etc. And obviously no social media. Yes I am one sad lonely old fool.

We went back a forth on this AML thing, they took it to the GM and they relented and accepted that they themselves could compare me to my passport photo and sight an address document.

So what would have happened if I had given the 3rd party my ID and a camera photo? Well as per their privacy statement, they would have shared that with the companies shown below. Hence the fuck off.

People outside of IT have no clue about what appears to be a simple photo ID request (and just digital live in general) means all the little bread crumbs they leave everywhere are reassembled into a full "loaf of bread" by the DIC

Bluck

=============================================================

COMPANIES MY ID WOULD HAVE GONE TO:

360kompany AG t/a Kompany, Data analysis, Austria

Aircall.io, Inc, Communication, United States

Amazon Web Services, Inc, Cloud services, United States

Armalytix Limited, Data analysis, United Kingdom

Centrix Group Limited, Data analysis, New Zealand

Creditsafe Business Solutions Limited, Data analysis, United Kingdom

Companies House, Data analysis, United Kingdom

Datadog, Inc, Data analysis, United States

Equifax Limited, Data analysis, United Kingdom

Fivetran, Inc, Data analysis, United States

Frankie Financial Pty Ltd, Identity verification, Australia

Freshworks, Inc, Customer support, United States

FrontApp, Inc, Communication, United States

Functional Software, Inc dba Sentry, Data analysis, United States

Global Data Consortium, Inc., Data analysis, United States

Google LLC, Cloud services provider, United States

HubSpot Inc, Sales and Marketing, United States

IVXS UK Limited t/a ComplyAdvantage, Data analysis, United Kingdom

Know Your Customer, Data analysis, Ireland

Kyckr Ireland Ltd, Data analysis, Ireland

Linkedin Corporation, Sales and Marketing, United States

Momentive, Inc dba SurveyMonkey, Communication, United States

Onfido PTE Ltd, Data analysis, Singapore

OpenAI LLC, Generative AI Solutions, United States

Outreach Corporation, Sales and marketing, United States

PandaDoc, Inc, Sales and marketing, United States

Salesforce.com, Inc dba Pardot, Sales and marketing, United States

SFDC Australia Pty Ltd dba Salesforce, Sales and marketing, Australia

Sisense Australia Pty Ltd, Data analysis, Australia

Slack Technologies, LLC, Communication, United States

Snowflake, Inc, Data analysis, United States

Talend, Inc dba Stitch, Data analysis, United States

The Rocket Science Group, LLC dba Mailchimp, Communication, United States

Tresorit AG, Communication, Switzerland

ZoomInfo Technologies LLC, Sales and Marketing, United States

[Neil Barnes]

Re: DIC - Data Industrial Complex

And everyone they sold the data onwards to, everyone who raided their storage...

You are me and I claim my five pounds.

[Recluse]

Re: DIC - Data Industrial Complex

Good for you, if only more people were prepared to say “no” and push back.

Something as simple as having a new will drafted, has taken me down a similar path (it seems more a question of posterior covering than addressing the realities of specific situations)

I operate in a similar vein and have foregone my free bus pass as I don’t trust the Council numpties to store my photograph securely. Of course if/when digital ID’s are introduced, those of us valuing our privacy will be in a whole world of pain (non persons?)

[Graham Cobb]

Re: DIC - Data Industrial Complex

Interestingly, Senior Railcards can be acquired without a photograph. And no photos taken during the process: turn up at a station in person and show a photo ID - which is not copied. Once you have one, you can renew for the next year without further ID at all - just pay the fee.

I guess they will stop allowing this once all the sad old gits like us have gone.

[vekkq]

Discord Inc.: your data safety is only your problem for using the platform, while allowing its third parties to ignore all GDPR requirements.

[Eric 9001]

The question is

Why is anyone still using discord?

The concept of discussing with rubes via proprietary software and SaaSS eludes me.

[vekkq]

Re: The question is

It is sadly so easy and comfortably to use that is has little competition.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The question is

It's easy to use and it's like social media for a given subject or interest or whatever. It's also unlikely to be brigaded. So for example if you have a vintage motorcycle discord it's unlikely you'll get gammons posting about how immigrants stole their bike.

[Paul Hovnanian]

Simple solution

Start posting "Dad" jokes.

[Bebu sa Ware]

I had heard of Discord but…

didn't actually know what it was or did apart from periodically coming to grief with authorities ranging from the PRC to the EU.

For the curious https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discord

Unsurprisingly I shall blissfully continue not using the their services. :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I had heard of Discord but…

I would rather not use it but a huge amount of niche communities have moved over to it over the last decade, following Skype's slow death when Microsoft bought them. Gaming groups (guilds as well as general communities), music, programming and development...

All of these have a huge amount of information locked behind access to the server, that in older days would likely have ended up on a public forum which could be archived and searched through. I know of least three projects where the only means of communication given are "for more info, join this Discord server".

It would be nice not to have to use it - and indee,d you can simply choose not to - but at the moment, it contains a huge trove of community knowledge that is otherwise inaccessible. This lock-in is what the real value is with Discord going for a public IPO.

[Pete 2]

Age or maturity?

> all new and existing users into a teen-appropriate experience by default,

What would be much more useful would be to assess users/members based not just on their legal age status, but on their worth, by contributions, to the community

[mark l 2]

I recently had a run in with the dating app Hinge which after me being on there for many months and in my 40s (and definitely look like it these days LOL) My account was suddenly suspended and i was required I upload government ID before they would reinstate my account.

When i emailed them and questioned who is doing the processing of the age checks, how long the data will be kept for, will it be transferred to any third parties? i receive no response. So i let the account get permanently deactivated, rather than sending my personal data to god knows where.

Unfortunately things are only going to get worse. It won't be long before the UK gov will be requiring El Reg and other such discussion forums to verify the age of their users for the 'won't someone think of the children' argument. And no matter what your political leaning are left, right or centrist none of the parties are speaking out against it.

[heyrick]

Meanwhile, in a nursery in Bristol [*], clearly nobody was thinking of the children until it was far too late.

Can't help but think that this is all smoke and mirrors to be seen to be doing something.

* - If your mind went to a really dark horrible place, well, the answer is "yes, that".

[Jedit]

"the 'won't someone think of the children' argument"

The UK government are currently discovering what happens when you employ one of Epstein's mates. You'd think it would be wise of them to not reveal that they're thinking of the children, wouldn't you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would I trust them??

Discord refused to give me back an old account I used to have for years (I was hacked by someone from discord themselves) and they wanted to scam me to pay an absurd amount of money to have it returned. Why would I trust them with this if they cannot be trusted with that. I'm an adult and refuse for them to get ahold of any information of myself they may end up using for themselves. Not going to let hackers/scammers get ahold of my identity, no sir. That's almost like walking around while holding up your social for all to see smh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Tumblr, is that you?

I think I've heard this one before, but I can't recall how it ended..

[Anonymous Coward]

Muppetry

Could be mistaken but this just seems like corporate suicide.

[JOHN CENA]

BOYCOTT DISCORD

This age verification BS on Discord is the final straw for me. There’s something deeply uncomfortable about being asked to prove who you are to a private company JUST to talk online. Safety shouldn’t come at the cost of basic privacy.

Gather Communities handles this way better and I have been a member it for months. Till now there are no invasive checks. What you have is a community-based moderation and searchable threads. It feels more human.

[Fara82Light]

Inference

I can not see legislators accepting age inference technology.

[Fara82Light]

Re: Inference

Oh dear; no DownVote Bot available during school hours?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Inference

it's half term :-)

[hrolf-kraki]

...And Then There's Peter Thiel In The Mix............

See: https://www.therage.co/persona-age-verification/

If even half of this is true, users need to avoid Discord and Persona like the plague.