this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2024

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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

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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[–] CosmicCleric@lemmy.world -2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

Interesting. I assumed Discord itself aggressively demands your phone number regardless of the “server” you join… At least, that’s been my experience.

That's the impression that is being given, but its not true.

I've been successful in a very few cases of getting a Discord server admin to dial back the verification level from 'highest' to 'high' on their server, so that I was not prompted for a phone number. They agreed that the highest setting was overkill.

Most times though server admins refuse to do so. ~~Gotta wonder at this point if they actually see the phone numbers or not.~~ Other server admins say they can't see the number, so will assume that's correct.

[–] Sanctus@lemmy.world 14 points 10 months ago (2 children)

When I ran a Naruto RP server we ran without verification for a while. Then trolls came in and they just kept coming back. They would target the feminine-identifying members of the server every time. Situations like this are probably why. To my knowledge I could not access the phone numbers.

[–] EngineerGaming@feddit.nl 3 points 10 months ago

In one XMPP group I was in that got spammed, they just disabled the ability to speak without manual approval. Was your "guild" too big for that? Can Discord do something like this? Because giving phone number to something as shady as Discord is just inappropriate.

[+] CosmicCleric@lemmy.world -8 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Then trolls came in and they just kept coming back. They would target the feminine-identifying members of the server every time. Situations like this are probably why.

Is the email verification/validation, being registered on Discord for more than five minutes, and being present in the server for longer than ten minutes, not sufficient?

[–] Sanctus@lemmy.world 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

No, they would just sign up with a new alias, wait, then join the server, wait, and then do it again. Most servers should not do this. But for situations like ours, a small RP server being harassed, it was useful for the year it was up. The users would not have been okay with that if the entire server wasn't a close community of about 20 people. Its just another example of a thing that can protect extremely small teams conveniently being abused by bigger entities to get something they want (your data).

[–] CallumWells@lemmy.ml 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

AFAIK you can have roles which have access to different parts of your server. Thus you can have that all newly joined accounts have a role where they only can see and interact with a channel for those waiting for acceptance. You can even make it “fill out a form in a thread” for why they want to join, and only after they’ve been accepted will they be given access to the rest of the server (or just some of it)

[–] Sanctus@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

I did that. When you get trolls in your server targeting your players, you can throw all the forms and wait times you want. It accomplishes two things: 1) it kills the real people trying to play, every barrier of entry just to type silly Naruto RP stories on a discord channel turns people off incrementally. 2) the trolls don't care, they make multiple accounts using gmail aliases and wait out the restrictions, when those are up a tidal wave of troll/bot combinations fucks your server.

In the end, I had to lock the server down for 3 months, I implemented a tool that exposed your MAC address, if it matched one on my blacklist you were automatically banned. This killed new players too. But it completely stopped the troll once I reported the MAC address to discord with screenshots. It ended up being a nurse at the hospital one of my players went to. They ended up losing their job. Crazy story tbh. I wouldn't handle it again like that but this was before I had worked IT.

[–] HKayn@dormi.zone 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Getting a valid email address, being registered on Discord for more than five minutes and being present in the server for longer than ten minutes takes, you guessed it, 15 minutes.

If you ban someone from your Discord server for harassing other members, they can be back at it after 15 minutes. How do you deal with that?

[–] CallumWells@lemmy.ml 1 points 10 months ago

AFAIK you can have roles which have access to different parts of your server. Thus you can have that all newly joined accounts have a role where they only can see and interact with a channel for those waiting for acceptance. You can even make it "fill out a form in a thread" for why they want to join, and only after they've been accepted will they be given access to the rest of the server (or just some of it)

[–] Nima@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

on quite a number of servers that are 18+, higher verification usually sounds a little bit more safe. But then on most of the servers I run or moderate, we tend to have our own in-house verification methods instead of the built levels for discord.

the idea of the verification levels is attractive, however. anything to keep the kids out. though I'm not sure I'd go as far as requiring a phone number, I might consider it for future.

it depends on how the server is going to be used. why a gaming server should be highest level, I don't know. I would think "high" is enough.

[–] CosmicCleric@lemmy.world -4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I would think “high” is enough.

Only difference between high and highest is the asking of the phone number, all other security checks are the same. So if the other existing forms of validation are not already enough, then the bad guys have already won.

[–] Nima@lemmy.world -1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

what "bad guys"? Whatever the server owner feels is appropriate for levels of validation is up to them. ya know?

[–] CosmicCleric@lemmy.world 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

what “bad guys”? Whatever the server owner feels is appropriate for levels of validation is up to them. ya know?

Those who would spam/troll/etc. The ones you're trying to exclude from the server. To repeat my comment ...

So if the other existing forms of validation are not already enough, then the bad guys have already won.

For the record, I was NOT talking at all about the server admins, at all.

[–] sanpo@sopuli.xyz 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I doubt they do. They just want to be "secure" and are unwilling to admit setting the level at "highest" is bullshit.

It's not like you can easily get a new number and circumvent this "security" measure if you want... /s

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

I doubt they do. They just want to be “secure” and are unwilling to admit setting the level at “highest” is bullshit.

That's the crux of it, they're using a lie by omission to not have to justify to their users that its they themselves that are asking for the phone number, and not Discord corpo.