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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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[–] LWD@lemm.ee 29 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (15 children)

deleted

[–] CosmicCleric@lemmy.world -3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (14 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.

[–] 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.

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