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Discord Servers asking for Phone Numbers and 'Verification Levels' (self.technology)

submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by CosmicCleric to c/technology

76 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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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[–] PhiAU 20 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

Discord has 5 levels of user verification.

None.(none)
Verified email. (Low)
Verified email + more than 5 minutes old account. (Medium)
Verified email + >5 mins old account + member of server for more than 10 mins. (High)
Verified email + >5 mins old account + server member >10 mins + verified phone number. (Highest)

Server admins can set the level. Some server sizes or types (community severs etc.) have a discord-mandated minimum level to qualify for the server type.

Normally (Medium) or (High) security is more than enough. Servers that experience raiding or high levels of trolling are recommended to choose (Very High) security as it makes it harder to make multiple accounts and evade bans or brigade a server.

Discord store the number. The server never sees those details.

Servers that ask for ID to ensure you are over age, are doing that in their own, and probably illegally handling that data, without adequate security.

The server sets the security level. Discord does the enforcing. It IS discord asking for the phone number. But only because the server asked Discord to. But the server definately doesn't see your phone number.

I run a game community server, and normally have security set at medium.

If raided, it goes to High.
If persistently trolled by a user or users that are ban evading (has happened only once), I turn it to highest for a bit.

But I turn it back down after a bit.

A bigger server might not get that luxury.
If a server has stupid high security settings, chances are they have active troublemakers.

[–] brianorca 5 points 7 months ago

What does the "5 minute" rule even do? Any bot can be programmed to wait that long, or have a few accounts lined up to use in sequence.

[–] CosmicCleric 0 points 7 months ago

Discord has 5 levels of user verification.

Just wanted to add that my OP has a link to the Discord page that breaks down each of the verification levels, if you want to read more about it.