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Discord Servers asking for Phone Numbers and 'Verification Levels' (lemmy.world)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by CosmicCleric@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/10799766

(Edit: Cross-posted OP (link above) was mod removed by the Discord forum 'admin' on 2024-01-19 as being "False claim, false interpreted", so the above link will no longer work.)

Recently read this on a Steam game's reviews section ...

User Comment...

The game's Discord REQUIRES your personal phone number to get access at all. This is a very intrusive, and 100% unnecessary requirement, in order to just be able to interact with others about the game, it's content, player experiences, and many other things. It's also intrusive in regards to being able to contribute any input to help other players in any way at all.

Dev Response...

It's Discord that's asking you for verification of the account. We're not getting your phone number. This is standard practice on bigger servers that allows for a better user experience, filtering bots/ spam accounts, trolls, etc.

Could companies please STOP lying about it being Discord's choice, its not, is the Discord server's choice to ask for it.

Its a "Verification Levels" setting that the server op sets, and they have multiple options that they can choose from, its not an on/off switch. They can dial it back one notch and still have spam/bot protections.

The only difference between "High" and "Highest" verification levels is the addition of asking for a phone number, all other features of "High" is in "Highest", and "Highest" has no other extra features besides asking for the phone number.

Makes it really hard to have an pseudonym account on the Internet, for gaming purposes, and then be asked for your real phone number. I don't need to be tracked 24/7.

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[-] CosmicCleric@lemmy.world 0 points 10 months ago

FYI, the cross-posted OP (link above) was mod removed by the Discord forum ‘admin’ on 2024-01-19 as being “False claim, false interpreted”, so the above link in the OP will no longer work.

[-] worsedoughnut@lemdro.id -1 points 10 months ago

As someone who had run & managed a Discord server with 10,000+ users, there's only so many options available to us to try and limit bot spam and throwaway account raids.

Yes it's needlessly intrusive to an extent, but you really should try and look at it from their perspective. We didn't run that setting 24/7, but we were also a pretty niche (albeit relatively popular) server. For a server that exists for a fully advertised steam game, I can kinda understand the urge to lock down the security settings to the maximum.Even some of the best server-ran bots which try and stop / catch suspicious accounts just can't do the trick sometimes, and the best solution after that is unfortunately the nuclear option.

[-] CosmicCleric@lemmy.world -1 points 10 months ago

Yes it’s needlessly intrusive to an extent, but you really should try and look at it from their perspective.

As someone who worked in the computer software field his whole career, I sincerely emphasize, I truly do.

But we're talking about recreational access to forums to discuss things like a video games with someone else.

To give up that level of personal information, information that's stored without clear legal specifications of what's done with it, that can be hacked and stolen and used for nefarious reasons, is a bridge too far.

It's putting the security onus on the user, where server security should be the onus of the server admins.

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this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2024

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