Hi all,

I haven’t used Discord in a while, but it became so that now I have to use it for communication with certain people getting support for some services that I use. What I’m doing currently is:

  • using a separate randomised e-mail address only for the Discord account
  • using a randomly generated username
  • no profile picture
  • tweaking the settings as best I can for privacy

Other than these points, I’m also being wary of talking about anything personal on Discord. Would you add anything so I can be even safer when using Discord?

  • m-p{3}@lemmy.ca
    27·
    8 months ago

    Always consider what you say on Discord as potentially public, since there is no E2EE.

    • refalo@programming.dev
      2·
      8 months ago

      That could potentially open them up to legal problems. Whether it’s technically legal or not, nobody wants the possibility of their livelihood being taken away by court costs just because some idiot who is wrong wants to fight them and lose anyway, because they can afford it and you can’t (and often times they know it).

      I once paid for access to a stock options trading group, but they only used discord. Their website had no other contact info at all. My discord account got randomly banned (it happened right after I joined an innocent server, but maybe because a bunch of people were joining at once, that triggered it? idk), so I could no longer use the service I was paying for. The service auto-renewed on my credit card and I had no way to contact the people to cancel my account (couldn’t even make a new discord account). I had to dispute the charge with my CC company and it took months of back and forth with them because they simply could not understand that I could no longer access the only method of support that they offered.

  • GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml
    7·
    8 months ago

    Discord doesn’t have encryption and, according to the terms of service, can read your messages. If you care about privacy, I definitely would not recommend using it for private conversations, especially after recent rumors about adding ads. I think they won’t lose the opportunity to use your DMs for it

  • LazerDickMcCheese@sh.itjust.works
    7·
    8 months ago

    I know interested people don’t like to talk about it…but we, the people, should really be moving away from Discord. A bucket of water doesn’t fix a burning house, ya know?

    • flux@lemmy.ml
      1·
      8 months ago

      Moving away from Discord can mean you need to stop interacting with the community using it. My personal examples are: Tilt5, Makera, Turbo Sliders. In the these cases Discord is also the way to access support for something you’ve paid for.

      Getting thise communities to move into something open (e.g. Matrix) can be a tall order.

  • breadsmasher@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    8 months ago

    If youre just talking to friends directly without joining servers so this might not matter. But discord might require a phone number for verification? Im not sure what triggers it specifically- I dont think its required just for an account though

    • variants@possumpat.ioEnglish
      1·
      8 months ago

      It depends on the server. Most servers set it to require an email verified account because of all the bots and spammers, I haven’t joined any that required a phone number but might if they support a product and want to link your discord to their orders or something

  • UnfortunateShort@lemmy.world
    5·
    8 months ago

    You can use it in a browser or opt for WebCord.

    Note that any text send to discord currently stays there forever. I don’t know when, but you can bet your ass they will be investigated for a violation of the GDPR, which hopefully stops that for good.

  • mox@lemmy.sdf.org
    4·
    8 months ago

    In that situation, I would also:

    • Only use it through a browser (with fingerprinting protection), never a Discord app.
    • Dedicate a browser installation, or at least a user profile, to Discord alone.
    • Only use it over a VPN connection dedicated to Discord, or Tor if it works.
    • Have an alternative channel (maybe Matrix?) ready and waiting for contacts who might be willing to switch.
  • jet@hackertalks.comEnglish
    4·
    8 months ago

    What is your threat model?

    If your running discord on your computer, you have to assume they know its your computer, your location, and any other PII on your computer.

    If you just dont want third parties (other than discord) to know which groups your in, then what you describe is probably fine.

  • refalo@programming.dev
    2·
    8 months ago

    The biggest issue IMO is the random phone-walling. Eventually, all the things you try to do to increase privacy will just cause Discord to force your account into phone verification. This happened to me many times. It’s now to the point where I cannot even sign up for discord whatsoever because it immediately transitions from the logged in screen to “something suspicious going on” and forces you to give out a personal mobile number, which I refuse.