Hi, there’s this situation i currently have with discord support, that they refuse to delete my phone number from my account. Basically every time i try to manually remove it, my account gets locked up until i add another phone number in order to continue accessing the service, “for security reasons” with no option for email verification (of course).
I contacted the support team asking for clarifications and if they could remove the phone number and, in short, they said that they couldn’t do that since my account was flagged somehow, and that they won’t remove the phone verification…
Now, what are your opinions about this? Should i use a free voip number site in order to replace my real phone number with the fake one? My concern is that i don’t know who could own that number so i don’t know if it’s safe to trust it, and i’m not willing to spend any money for this
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I’ll keep you updated soon, i’m currently waiting for discord dpo department to respond to my second email explicitely requesting the erasure of my account since in the first email they tried to divert the request into suggesting me to contact the privacy email of Discord, but as we all know that email is just for privacy questions and doesn’t do erasures of accounts under specific requests or laws by the sender. It’s been one week, they still have more or less three weeks left to respond. If they don’t i’ll take action and report them to the authorities
You use discord. What do you expect?
Their system has “triggered successfully”, great news everyone! 😃👍
/s
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that’s weird. I just opened discord and deleted my phone number without any issues, just had to type password and 2fa and done. I did it in the android app btw.
I did it on android too, but that’s not it. As i said, my account was flagged for some reason
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Discord is the worst, matrix is not the best but way better than discord
Matrix is just reinventing the bike, go on xmpp
Can you have channels grouped under a server/space with it?
In terms of privacy, sure… but in terms of usage and beauty i sadly say that discord wins. I’m very attached to vencord which has many useful plugins that improve the discord user experience, there won’t ever be something similar for matrix, ever
“Ever” may be a bit pessimistic, Cinny is going the right way, not totally there yet, but it is their objective
One of the servers I’m in requires a phone number in order to post and comment. Glad I never added my number in the first place. OP, I hope you can eventually get your number removed.
Thanks, this all thing is stressing me out in a way i can’t explain to be honest
delete discord from your life, fuck them
(if that is not an option for you, i understand but can’t help unfortunately)
i did when they started to want my phone number
remember to use the GDPR to delete all your data, they need every message id from you for that, but with a bit of cat, grep and sed you can easily get that from a discord data package
Did you replace discord with something else? Or did you completely delete that kind of social in your internet life?
I use Matrix (with Element client). It’s federated like lemmy and it rocks!
Matrix (Element), Telegram and Signal
but most of it just got deleted
Are you from the EU? If so, just threaten them with reporting them to the GDPR people
If you are not but always used the service behind a European based VPN/IP, I wonder if you would be able to call their bluff with this line.
The will give exactly 0 fucks about that.
I wonder if anyone from the US had any luck with these request. Not that it has any jurisdiction but more of a “not my job to sort them" type deal.
Unfortunately this is not a violation of GDPR unless they refused to delete all of your data.
luckily i’ve found this website that could help me with this
That’s really helpful, thanks.
"Beware, Discord is very shifty when it comes to privacy data requests. Last year their Privacy Policy stated “In addition to the functionality available through the “Settings” of the Services, in which you can correct, update, amend, or delete certain personal data, you can also request . . . from us directly. Please write us at privacy@discord.com with the words “Personal Data Request” in the subject . . . along with an explanation of what data subject right you are seeking to exercise.”
However they have since removed that text and there is a new clause that states they have a dedicated “Data Protection Officer” email. See, what they don’t tell you is that privacy@discord.com is only for questions about privacy - not data requests. They have kept their DPO email hidden until recently and now it shows on their privacy policy as stated “You can contact Discord’s Data Protection Officer at dpo@discord.com.” Curiously, they have removed all mention of “Personal Data Request” from their Privacy Policy. So unless you know what you are doing, you wouldn’t know what to look for. Just a heads up!"
This comment was made by a certain “Joe” under the section of Contact information for privacy-related requests to “Discord, Inc.” on that same website i linked. So as he said if you will report a deletion request for Discord, make sure you send it to their Data Protection Officer at dpo@discord.com.
You should probably use a paid-for burner phone number online that’s guaranteed to only be used once. There are many services available.
i prefer to delete my account than spending money on something that they should’ve just complied with
Probably because they need your phone number to verify the account. If you don’t like it, delete your account (knowing they still have your phone number because you gave it to them).
If you didn’t want them having it, why did you give it to them in the first place?
because back then i didn’t know what privacy on the internet was
If you want to use Discord nowadays you need a valid phone number, that’s it.
Either you agree with it and use their service, or you don’t and delete your account with all your data.
They use this to battle spam accounts (with quite some success, been over a year since I’ve been contacted by scammers), there is no good way around it.
No you don’t. I can use it just fine without a phone number added.
That’s an old account then. New ones don’t work without. And at some point they suddenly force you to add a number out of nowhere.
New accounts work perfectly fine without a phone number as well. Only certain servers require one. It’s an option in servers settings. It could also be a regional thing.
It’s interesting how the truth gets downvoted while misleading information gets upvoted. Apparently people like randomly clicking buttons without verifying anything. That seems like it could be really harmful. Since votes are public information, maybe there’s a way to play around with that.
You don’t get it. Server settings are only one part of it, Discord also has their own account wide policies.
For example I had a second account I used on Discord. Verified email, used it for years on and off every now and then. Last time I tried to login? No longer possible, I need to add a valid phone number and verify it. I couldn’t even get back into the account at all!
No way around it, if Discord flags your account for whatever reason they log you out and force you to add a phone number. All it might take is you pressing logout once and next time you try to login you’re blocked. If even that.
Yeah so just to clarify I totally believe you when you say that an account can technically get flagged. However, I don’t believe that “New ones don’t work without [a phone number]” and I also don’t believe that every account will be flagged eventually like the other commenter mentioned.
Remember, the initial comment I questioned was saying that “If you want to use Discord nowadays you need a valid phone number”.
But you can easily test this yourself: Go and try to create a new Discord account without a phone number. Then try to use it.
I couldn’t, Discord immediately forces me to add a phone number on login.
Maybe it’s regional? Or they have different behavior based on your email address provider?
I gave up on having a second account.
I did and I could use it.
Yeah or maybe it’s based on a cookie or IP ranges or other forms of tracking.
you just have to manage to not let your account flagged, but when that happens (and it will) then it’s either voip number or your real phone number
That seems to be very easy. I’ve been using it for over half a decade, am a member on dozens of very different servers, interacted with hundreds of people, wrote tens of thousands of messages - I actually checked all those numbers - and participated in discussions about all kinds of topics. My assumption is that the threshold for this sort of flag is set really high. Either that or it’s different based on where you live, maybe based on laws or politics or such.
using a free VoIP number isn’t an option cause the moment you remove it discord with boot you off again, and keeping it is a huge security risk.
if you’re a new discord account it’s (in my experience) not possible to go without a verified phone number, their system is too sensitive
Discord doesn’t care about privacy, if you do then Discord isn’t the service for you. You could use a burner number, or host your web VoIP server where you don’t need to worry about your privacy.
how can i do that? is it costly?
Best bet is to purchase a prepaid sim card and activate it with an old spare mobile phone (if you have one, that is). This is how you get a “physical” number that’s authentic enough for sms verification. This is assuming you live in a place where prepaid sims are sold freely and can be activated without hassles.
There are websites and applications offering “burner numbers” for situations like this or people living in places that place restrictions in new sim cards. Most of them tend to get their numbers from voip providers sold cheaply. They can work most of the time, but picky organizations like Google and Discord can and will probably detect voip numbers when it’s the case.
My personal experience is that Google doesn’t like it and refuse those ones, asking for an actual “physical” phone number. Discord, on the other hand, did accept voip numbers when I tried (around 2 years ago).
To add on to this, after you verify your account with a prepaid sim number, you can port that number to a free VoIP service so it becomes useless for tracking you IRL but you can still use it to reset your password if needed. It’s not like they keep checking after it’s already verified.
A service like VoIP.ms you can get a DID (phone number) that supports SMS for a one time fee around $2 and usage fees around $0.001/minute
The cheapest option would be to just buy a cheap sim and verify the number with discord then throw the sim in the bin.
don’t they have monthly fees?
You can get prepaid sims which don’t renew automatically. You can also find carrier’s that allow you to cancel whenever no extra charge.
I think Google offers free phone numbers through Google Voice. As far as I know, you can port in numbers too, so if you really wanted, you could get an inexpensive prepaid plan then transfer it to Google. (but I doubt there will be a problem using the Google Voice number that is assigned for free)