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?
I’ll give you the most extreme solutions I can think of, and let you decide how much of each you want to enact.
First and foremost: use a secure and privacy friendly OS—Qubes on a burner pc or GrapheneOS on a burner phone—with secure and privacy-friendly networking—use DNS-over-HTTPS, or self-host as much of the infrastructure as you can, consider a VPN, keep the device on an isolated VLAN—use a secure/private web browser like LibreWolf.
General rules of online interaction apply for maintaining privacy within the servers: e.g. don’t talk specifics about your location, your age, your physical appearance, your childhood, your employer, etc.
As with most modern apps, the web app is necessarily less intrusive than the installable binary. Use the web app when you can, and limit your usage to only when you can use the web app on a computer and network you own—privacy enforcing habits are more important than all the software stopgaps in the world.
If you absolutely must use a binary, consider breaking Discord’s TOS and using a modified front-end: I know some people who use Aliucord for Android, and I just this moment learned about GoofCord for desktop
don’t install/run any software without verifying the integrity of the developers/distributors and binaries yourself, or building from source and verifying the code
It’s better to have Discord stealing your browsing data to sell you shit than have some random github malware rootkitting your phone.
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.
Yeah, they have upped their “paranoia” quite a bit in the past couple of years. A while back, I discovered smspool.net while trying to register for Claude (wanted to give it a shot, was disappointed) and was so satisfied by their interface and prices I’ve used it again in 3 other occasions. There may be other similar services out there, you should give one a try next time Discord prompts you for a number.
thanks for the recommendation, but unfortunately due to my privacy settings, most cloudflare sites do not work, I just get endless “are you human” prompts that never go away.
Plus any site that uses crimeflare isn’t private anyway because they can MITM all your traffic including credit card info etc.
If you’re on Tor, that’s the very unfortunate reality atm. If you’re on a VPN, you may try switching providers or servers inside the same provider. I can recommend Mullvad, which works very well, even if you get some CAPTCHAs.
Neither, it happens because my browser settings make it more difficult for them to fingerprint me which makes it think I’m a bot or something untrustworthy.
Interesting, my Discord profile is also very hardened, and while it prompts me for confirmation, it’s always doable in a moment
Depends a lot on your threat model, of course, but here’s what I do:
- use a temporary (but recoverable) email
- use smspool or similar to verify my phone for less than a dollar
- run Discord in a hardened Firefox profile (hardened browser settings + uBlock)
- turn everything relevant off in Discord settings just in case
- don’t share PII in conversation
- use a VPN (or Tor)
Using a hardened browser and not giving them your real phone are likely the most effective steps, everything else is either less relevant or overkill. As I said, depends a lot on your threat model and on your requirements (some things may be unachievable if you’re forced to use Discord by your employer, for example).
I’ve found that being consistent with what you choose to share is the most difficult thing. Conversations can get personal, and as you get closer to those random nicknames there’s the constant urge to share mundane stuff about your daily lives like weather, holidays, and such that will all add up.
Yeah I feel you. It’s often hard to be fully alert of what you’re sharing all the time. I have slip ups but it’s usually fine, I’m only mega careful regarding things that could give away the city/town/village I live in, and where I work. If I ever really want to talk about it, I will use a different (often temporary) alias.
Use a Foss client that blocks the client tracking aspects, tor to connect, and only post pgp encrypted messages on it?
Don’t waste time your life on harm reduction over solving the root, removing Discord completely.
While this may be a good end goal, these comments are really more harmful than anything else. Removing your dependency on some proprietary service can be very far from trivial, or even doable, there is a wide-range of internal or external factors preventing you from ditching it.
For example, part of my work and a bunch of good online friends of mine use Discord, so I keep it around. If you do any social gaming as well, you’ll also most likely find it hard to ditch the platform, as it’s grown deep roots in the community.Anyway, it’s better to take small steps in the right direction than trying to make a U-turn and fail miserably.
I would invest more into stopping ‘friends’ encourging me to get abused than micro-optimising the malware infecting me.
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.
Use vencord, which bundles OpenAsar, which disables the built-in tracking from the app.
Is Vencord superior to Discord in the web browser?
EDIT: Never mind; it has browser extensions! https://vencord.dev/download/
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.
Always consider what you say on Discord as potentially public, since there is no E2EE.
Worse, anti-libre software, Discord, bans us from proving it’s claims, if it ever claims privacy, security, anything.
Nope
You forgot the VPN.
Use any matrix client unstead.
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
No way when this https://lifehacker.com/tech/discord-data-sold-to-ai-and-law-enforcement and this https://spy.pet/ exist
getting support for some services that I use
NAME AND SHAME please.
Honestly the list of ones that DONT use Discord would be shorter. It’s extremely unfortunate. I championed Discord for many years as well.
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.
It’s not illegal to tell people that a company uses discord for support. You’re not slandering them if it’s the truth.
You don’t know how to post from an alt account?
