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| title | date | description | type | tags | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Don't Use Discord | 2021-06-29T20:16:40-05:00 | Discord doesn't give a shit about your privacy | post |
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Originally posted on the exozyme blog
Discord doesn't give a shit about your privacy
Discord forbids third-party clients, bans people for no reason and doesn't explain why, shares everything with governments, and sells off all your data to the highest bidder. It has no encryption at all, not even badly implemented end-to-end encryption like WhatsApp. Everything about the app and servers are closed source and proprietary. That just exacerbates its already-bad security issues.
It collects a very large amount of data about you, including your IP address, all your messages including "private" ones, all your voice chat data, and even information about other apps on your system if you use the desktop client. Discord's privacy policy contains multiple occurrences of phrases such as "including but not limited to," which explicitly confirms that Discord's privacy situation is even worse than we currently know.
Best of all, you can even pay them in the form of Discord Nitro to violate your privacy! What fun!
So what now?
There are many great alternatives available, such as Matrix. You can even bridge your Discord account to your Matrix account, although this clearly violates Discord's Terms of Service. Literally any chat app, other than Zoom, has better privacy than Discord.
If you must use Discord, please do so in your browser, preferably in a private or incognito window. Treat everything you do on Discord as if it is public, including your "private" messages. Do not download the spyware desktop or mobile apps at all costs!
Anyways, I'll end with a quote from this very scary analysis of Discord's mass surveillance:
"Keep this in mind: - Every single thing you touch inside of the app, and even some things outside of it, are logged in an event containing your user ID, a unique event ID, a timestamp, and a very detailed description of what exactly you did. - Every single message and attachment you send may be perused by Discord staff and of course potential future hackers."
Have fun with Discord!