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?
A VPN and the other stuff you mentioned will deal with it
VPNs do not protect your privacy. Please don’t spread FUD
They do not protect one’s privacy if someone is motivated enough, i.e. nation states, or if OP’s VPN company sells their information. You can be reasonably assured that Mullvad and IVPN aren’t exactly doing that. In terms of obfuscating one’s IP, if that’s a step towards one’s privacy from big tech, then yes good VPNs definitely protect one’s privacy
Nope
Discord works hard not to private
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/
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. Not saying don’t break it down into steps.
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.
You can use Armcord or other Discord client which is for sure better than the offical.
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.
- Only use it over a VPN connection dedicated to Discord, or Tor if it’s allowed.
- Have an alternative channel (maybe Matrix?) ready and waiting for contacts who might be willing to switch.
When I tested it, VPN do work after sms verification. Tor nodes, however, resulted in all my test accounts being banned.
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?
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.
I get your point, but that’s exactly what I do. When someone say “just use discord”, I drop their product/service/etc. and move on. I’m not saying everyone else should do that, but my life is too short for “support” via Discord
It’s a hostage situation they’re doing like any proprietary social network. You want to encourage people to move away from them, but then you need to interact with those same people in order to do that.
Do you game with friends? If so, what do you use instead of discord?
An end to end encrypted chat app that supports group chats and calls.
Yeah, I text and call them
Use a Foss client that blocks the client tracking aspects, tor to connect, and only post pgp encrypted messages on it?
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.
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
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
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.
Use any matrix client unstead.
