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[–] 117 points 1 year ago (4 children)

The fact that these photos and PII (personally identifiable information) were not destroyed after the verification process was certified is absolutely atrocious OpSec. I don't even care which of the two companies is ultimately responsible, because they are both responsible.

  1. Zendesk for their bad OpSec
  2. Discord for both outsourcing this AND not having contractual requirements to properly secure and destroy PII when it was no longer required.

I work in IT, and treat PII like it's dangerously radioactive, because in the digital world, it really is.

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  • [–] 304 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Anyone still defending age verification online is an idiot.

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  • [–] 211 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (30 children)

    So, I looked at age verification - it was made clear photos were on device only and never transmitted.

    If this turns out to be false, then the legal fallout would be apocalyptic.

    (Edit: or not, see the comment by ambitiousprocess below)

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  • [–] 123 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    These were photos submitted via the compromised support provider (Zendesk) via the Discord support portal.

    Automated age verification via their partner (k-ID, which has its own issues) is a separate system, which was only available to some users. Other users had to contact Discord support manually and submit photo ID, which went through Zendesk, which was then compromised in this breach.

    https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/360041820932-Help-I-m-old-enough-to-use-Discord-in-my-country-but-I-got-locked-out

    Additionally, for the automated process, it's the video selfie that's on-device and never transmitted, but photos of your ID and selfie photo are transmitted, just supposedly deleted afterwards. Those ones are *not included in this breach, as far as we're aware, as it's an entirely different third-party with wholly separate infrastructure.

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  • [–] 55 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Which is why you farm off stuff like this to third parties whenever possible

    DiscordCorp will get a slap on the wrist and give people an offer of a free six months of discord turbo (so long as you provide payment info so it can auto-renew on month seven).

    But ANY meaningful consequences will go toward Zendesk Corp for not doing what they were supposed to. And... then everyone will just use ZZendesk instead

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  • [–] 25 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Well, yeah. Discord isn't exactly at fault here, they're operating as best they can within the boundaries of a piece of legislation that could be best described as gods gift to the "I-told-you-so" crowd. This breach is exactly what everyone was warning would happen with the UK ID laws, and discord got stung first as they're one of the few companies trying to adhere to the law in good faith (which, yes, why in hell they're trying to do this is good faith is a very good question)

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    In my opinion, they're still somewhat at fault, because this was them failing to find and configure their software to work with a third-party identity provider who's infrastructure was built to handle the security of sensitive information, and just choosing to use email through Zendesk because it was easier in the meantime. A platform that I should note has been routinely accessed again and again by attackers, not just for Discord, but for all sorts of other companies.

    The main problem is that legislation like the Online Safety Act require some privacy protections, like not collecting or storing certain data unless necessary, but they don't require any particular security measures to be in place. This means that, theoretically, nothing stops a company from passing your ID to their servers in cleartext, for example.

    Now compare this to industries like the credit card industry, where they created PCI DSS, which mandates specific security practices. This is why you don't often see breaches of any card networks or issuers themselves, and why most fraud is external to the systems that actually process payments through these cards. (e.g. phishing attacks that get your card info, or a store that has your card info already getting hacked)

    This is a HUGE oversight, and one that will lead to things like this happening over and over unless it becomes unprofitable for companies to not care.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    While there's plenty of merit to what you're saying, I'm too sick to have a coherent thought beyond maybe pointing out that the main issue with legislation like this isn't that it doesn't specify security requirements, but that it's forcing people who do not have infrastructure established to collect and manage sensitive info of this nature in the first place.

    Discord never set out to collect this much PII, and as far as I'm aware there's never been a breach of their payment information processing. Like you say, it's an established thing to handle payments and is fairly routine to implement. There is no routine method of handling ID verification yet, and the solutions that exist were forced to be developed rapidly and with no standards.

    The legislation is at fault for putting people in this situation - that they used Zendesk was a boneheaded move (I haven't seen details of the breach, was that really the vector that got attacked?) and sure, they're at some degree of fault for letting this happen. But the vast majority of the blame lies at the feet of the asinine legislation that all but explicitly mandated that this situation arise.

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  • Oh, of course the legislation is to blame for a lot of this in the end. I'm just saying that Discord could have already partnered with a number of identity verification services that do already have this infrastructure up and running, with standardized and documented ways to call their APIs to both verify and check the verification of a user.

    At the end of the day, Discord chose to implement a convoluted process of having users email Discord, upload IDs, then have Discord pull the IDs back down from Zendesk and verify them, rather than implementing a system where users could have simply gone to a third-party verification website, done all the steps there, had their data processed much more securely, then have the site just send Discord a message saying "they're cool, let 'em in"

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  • [–] 31 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    What legal fallout? Discord made users agree to new terms just a week ago that involves forced arbitration.

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Forced arbitration clauses are not legal in many European jurisdictions, so "agreeing" to them didn't actually do anything.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    Sounds like Discord is about to have 2 million cases of arbitration to sort out.

    One person takes them to arbitration, it's short work for their legal team, if 1000 do it's harder, if 100,000 do, you still have to respond in a timely manner. The costs would be astronomical.

    Valve and a few others removed it for that reason, it's a bomb waiting to blow.

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Where is that small print? It should be archived before Discord tries to change it.

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  • [–] 20 points 1 year ago* (3 children)

    Here's the information directly from the FAQ as of right now:

    Q: Is my data stored when I use Face Scan or Scan ID verification?

    A: Discord and k-ID do not permanently store personal identity documents or your video selfies. The image of your identity document and the ID face match selfie are deleted directly after your age group is confirmed, and the video selfie used for facial age estimation never leaves your device.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (3 children)

    you agree to legal mediation other than a court in their terms of service, so... not really

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Those don't always hold up, especially when the shit is really hitting the fan.

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  • [–] 50 points 1 year ago (12 children)

    Hmm, I don't recall ever doing age verification for Discord. Were older accounts grandfather'd in, or is it currently limited by region or something?

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  • [–] 68 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    I think it's a UK thing

    They have been passing legislation to basically dox their citizens for them to gain access to the internet

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

    I believe people from EU UK and people who say they were under 13 and got reported. They needed to send in a pic of them holding their ID to get unbanned.

    edit: UK people not EU

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    [–] 47 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    And this is why this provide xyz private information for verification bs should be illegal

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    And why any service asking it should be moved on from.

    Pretty sure these people could have found a teamspeak, matrix, or mumble server without the requirement.

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  • [–] 41 points 1 year ago

    Thank god I never gave them an image.

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  • [–] 34 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Oh no it's that thing everyone would say would happen!

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  • [–] 30 points 1 year ago (5 children)
  • [+] -6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

    discord isn't at fault here. I don't say they do good stuff either, i just want to stick to the facts. It's the UK government who forced them in the first place

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  • [–] 54 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    Proofs the UK is a shithole as well funnily enough.

    Nothing against the Brits but their government oh damn that's bad.

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  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Wait til you see the next one.

    :(

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  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Yep. This is just the first. As long as individuals submit to these ID verifications, services which provide them will be highly targeted. I find it ridiculous that 1.5 million people actually submitted their info to access discord instead of finding a workaround or alternative. I can only imagine how many are gullible enough to verify on porn sites.

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  • Well before the UK online ID laws, I saw some memes about people getting asked for ID as proof of age for NSFW servers, just to send to server admins. I figured it was a ID fraud scheme of some sort, but now I'd chalk it up to manic "protect the children" believers.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    The Labour under Starmer is closet Tory. I wish that the popular Manchester Labour mayor (whose name I forgot) takes his place as PM, which actual leftist politicians try to make him to be. Although this will be a Sysiphean task under the ruthless politicking in British politics and Labour Party's own strict rule on who could become PM.

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  • [–] 25 points 1 year ago

    To the surprise of no one here. This is the first thing I think of when a system wants me to upload an ID.

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  • congrats everyone on your two free months of credit monitoring

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  • [–] 24 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Politicians: That's the point.

    Joking aside, now that I think about it, what difference does does it make if companies are stealing infos and spying on you with government mandated age verification checks, and hackers stealing your government mandated age verification info? This just reinforces my view that governments (and companies) are nothing but glorified gangsters.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    A hacker stealing your id can do way more malicious stuff like more expertly crafted phishing and identity fraud just to name two.

    No one involved in this from the government to the companies is innocent in this chain though in my opinion. A breach is always bound to happen.

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  • To me giving a company or government permission to create the databases allowed for mass facial recognition is the same thing as giving the facial recognition data to criminals. It will be leaked/hacked/sold, etc. It is only a matter of time.

    How many Social security numbers in the U.S. have been leaked/hacked/sold/illegally transferred? ~340 million.

    Facial recognition will be a near useless tool for security in 10 years, and 100% for population monitoring at the rate we are going.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Option 3: companies that you pay to provide authentication service. Regulated so that they clearly tell you if they are subsidizing service outside of your payments.

    We nearly already do this with certificate services and they would probably be in a good position to offer an id service.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Option 3: companies that you pay to provide authentication service. Regulated so that they clearly tell you if they are subsidizing service outside of your payments.

    Then you just need to hack this company instead of Discord, you only change target.

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  • [–] 22 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    More than half of them turn out to be AI

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  • [–] 22 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    so instead of creating some kind of authorization system that would not require sending your private information to everyone the govt did nothing and instead put that responsibility on EVERY company. begs the question why rushing so much?

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    The department of Social security could have created some sort of public/private key pair to very age and DOB. But that's too much to ask for isn't it?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    so instead of creating some kind of authorization system that would not require sending your private information to everyone the govt did nothing and instead put that responsibility on EVERY company. begs the question why rushing so much?

    I would suppose that this is because there is not a single way valid for every govt. For example, in Italy we have SPID, which is different from what Germany, France and every EU state have.
    If Discord wanted to use it, they had to implement a numbers of way to do it, which can be not that easy.

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  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    A certain subset of people: "B-but at least it stops kids seeing photos of dental decay!!!1111"

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (4 children)
  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    my friend who also lives in the uk was unable to view a Reddit post that had a picture of dental decay because it was marked as nsfw and Reddit requires you to verify age using ID/selfie to be in compliance with the uk's Online Safety Act to see anything marked as nsfw.

    my comment was a play on the people who think this is all worth it because it might prevent kids from seeing porn

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

    More people got It then didn't. I clearly didn't.

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  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    this is why i dont give my ID to any service(obv including Discord) anymore.

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  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I've criticized the sort of personal information that is allowed to be managed by banking entities in the cases of Accidental Americans, where people who have nothing to do with America except that they were born in the US have their data handled by private entities to be passed onto governments they've never been in. Public entities that should handle and be responsible for it in their actual home countries want to wash their hands off from them and there's too much money against too small of a minority for anyone to care about their rights. It doesn't matter how banks have consistently proven that they or their staff can act criminally, either.

    At least here, it affects a lot more people so it will likely bring in the change and reform it needs, even if the sensitivity of this data is significantly less.

    Gonna have to say, this guy is definitely gonna be screwed by this:

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    the only person who's allowed to verify my age is my cat because he won't stop being a dick about it

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago

    That's why I used a picture of my anus for my age verification photo. The wrinkles are what sold it, I think.

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