- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
In short, a kid made a Discord account at age 12, lied about her age and said she was 18. The kid at age 13 clicked a scam link claiming to be Discord support and lost access to her account. Scammer asked for parents bank account details which is how the dad became aware. Dad tried to report the issue to Discord, but had to go through an AI support bot that kept closing the ticket. Dad spoke with someone named “Molly” that was possibly a human and explained that his daughter’s account had a lot of underage friends tied to the account that could be at risk. “Molly” said they’d have to open a ticket from within the app, which they no longer had access to because his daughter never set up 2FA.
Discord didn’t actually do anything about this until Ars stepped in. After regaining access to the account the daughter found 2 friends fell for the scam. Discord later banned the account for violating the TOS when lying about her age and stated they would only restore the account if they shared a photo of the kid along with a copy of her birth certificate or passport. The father gave in and complied so she didn’t lose access to her friends.
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Discord later banned the account for violating the TOS when lying about her age and stated they would only restore the account if they shared a photo of the kid along with a copy of her birth certificate or passport.
The guy who applies for the “looking at pictures of little girls” position at discord needs to be on every single list
The tech sector loves to outsource this kind of thing to traumatized and underpaid people overseas.
Back in my day we figured out how to take care of this without getting mom and dad involved. Lol
For real… just make a new account. It’s fucking discord. It’s not like some game where you lose progress or something.
Asked for comment, a Discord spokesperson told Ars that the platform “takes situations like this seriously, especially when they involve teens and account security.”
More like Discord only takes these things seriously when an article drags them. Probably only banned the kids account because she dropped this on them and they handled it badly.
Crazy how far this company has fallen, but that’s expected I guess when $$$ are on the line.
The company has fallen? From where? Discord was bottom of the barrel for as long as I can remember.
For the first few years, when it had no profit motive, no way to earn money, and was just willingly bleeding cash to gain market share, it was great! That is the first stage of enshittification and they are now on to stage 2: making the platform good for the real target audience, advertisers.
adding AI was that sign.
The company has always been shit run by shitty people.
Never trust a tech worker, they decided long ago to sell out the species and the planet.
Never trust a tech worker, they decided long ago to sell out the species and the planet.
As a tech worker, I resent that comment.
As someone who volunteered time over 20 years to maintain a well-used open-source project, I think your comment is a cheap generalization that shows remarkably low forethought.
As someone who knows what a comma splice is, though, I guess it’s all good.
Never trust a tech worker, they decided long ago to sell out the species and the planet.
The ironic thing is, the tech industry started out from hippie counterculture. Fucking tech-bro business major types ruined it.
“Never trust a tech worker” they said, using a device designed by a tech worker, running software designed by a tech worker, accessing servers maintained by a tech worker, on a hosting service implemented and managed by tech workers, through an internet service provider employing tech workers galore.
It makes more sense when they say ‘tech worker’ you read it as ‘magical internet executive’
The real question: Why didn’t she just make a new Discord account? It’s free and stupidly easy.
It’s not that hard to contact your old friends and tell them your account for hacked. In fact, that happens all the time.
It’s probably because we tell kids about how dangerous scams are and all the problems that can occur, but we don’t teach ways to mitigate the issue when it does occur, the child was probably worried that all of their friends would fall for the scam and everyone would get in trouble, it honestly sounds like she was more concerned for her friends then she was about her discord account.
I’ve had adults act pretty much just like this, they are not well versed in how shit works but hear all the scary stories, so if things go a little wrong it is terrifying.
I assume these are internet friends, otherwise yeah just talk at school and discuss the scam over phone or whatever.
There’s been a spate of Discord-based hacking attempts lately, two of my friends have had to do this. They can’t get their old accounts back, Discord is basically just ignoring them. Starting new accounts is easy.
The hard part is that they also lost their gmail accounts, that’s a lot more important for most people to be able to recover. I recommend everyone with a gmail account do the “create an emergency recovery code” thing, print it out and store it somewhere safely off anything digital.
This is how Discord works.
I’ve two separate friends who lost access to their accounts. One lost it via hacking or social engineering, and the other lost access because their mail service shut down. Both long time users, with the subscription bullshit.
Both struggled with support, neither got their accounts back. Both made new accounts and continued paying the subscription. Absolutely bonkers.
I’m rather suspicious of this story given the timing and the increase of “we need online ID to protect the children” narratives being pushed by various government
Lol I was going to say it sounds like all the AI shit that’s posted to the “today I fucked up” forums all it needed was a couple " I turned my phone off because it was blowing up" and oddly similar and unnecessarily given ages.
Yeah. It was magically resolved by providing ID.
Hmmm.
Not just “ID” but a fucking birth certificate.
Which, of all the documents that can be faked, it’s that one.
No picture. Just a piece of paper with a name, weight and parents’ names.
How do they even verify my foreign birth certificate?
Like I could just forge one bearing the seal of my former country, how do they even tell if that’s legit?
Discord later banned the account for violating the TOS when lying about her age and stated they would only restore the account if they shared a photo of the kid along with a copy of her birth certificate or passport. The father gave in and complied so she didn’t loose access to her friends.
This is valid on Discord’s part. The father should have helped her to make a new account instead of giving away records if he’s really insistent on letting his kid have Discord. Also, “loose”
Whoops
Frey told Ars he was shocked to see a platform as big as Discord relying on such poor support infrastructure.
It’s exactly what we can expect from tech companies these days.
Another reminder to ditch Discord.
The problem will always be that companies and organizations will still use it as a primary communication platform, same issue with Twitter and face book, I have left all those platforms but still have sock puppet accounts so that I can access information that is difficult to find elsewhere. It’s kind of a never ending cycle.
We need a group of talented people who want to start making nonprofit social media platforms, but then maintain them in such a way that it attracts the companies, and organizations that currently use the for profit sites.
This
discord now has ads btw. the ads are gonna become more annoying as we go along
Really? That sounds awful.
The IRC servers I’m at don’t have ads. Its very nice.
Shit that’s dystopic!
