Comment on Discord Servers asking for Phone Numbers and 'Verification Levels'
CosmicCleric@lemmy.world 9 months agoIt’s trivial to create new accounts and emails to verify those accounts.
Is it really that trivial, especially while having to spend your own money to do so?
And can’t that be detected in the same way that virtual phone numbers are detected by Discord currently?
You get your ISPs email address, and you could have your Google address, what else?
Granted, a phone number is better than email for verification, but plenty of websites work off email verification today successfully.
As the owner of a 2000+ user server, this setting is an absolute necessity because yes, disposable email accounts are plentiful and Discord still does a poor job of detecting them. Server raids still happen, and temporarily restricting access to non-verified accounts helps mitigate this.
However, Discord's phone number verification blocks most VoIP or burner numbers from being registered. It's one of the few things Discord does pretty well these days, IMO.
You get your ISPs email address, and you could have your Google address, what else?
I host my own email. I have literally billions of email addresses available if I want them and getting billions more only costs however much I can get a new domain registration for, which isn't often more than $10. I already own a dozen domains or more and I can have any username I want at any of those domains for any email at no additional cost.
Now I'm not some dickhead harassing people online or spamming discord servers, but I will admit that Wendy's once had a deal where you could get a free frosty for creating a new account and I had free frosty coupons for weeks before they realized that email only verification for unique users was a losing proposition and they switched to requiring that new accounts attach a phone number.
Email verification only works if you've got nothing to lose. As soon as there's anything on the line, you'd better look for something more concrete like a phone number, a credit card, or a government ID. Personally I'm more comfortable with Discord having one of those pieces of info before the other two, but that's just me, you do you.
subignition@kbin.social 9 months ago
What are you talking about? There are endless services where you can get a free email address without spending a cent. Verifying that an email is genuine is a much harder ask than you might think.
CosmicCleric@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Fair enough, but then how is it used today successfully by websites?
thoughts3rased@sopuli.xyz 9 months ago
That’s the thing, it’s not. Lots, and I mean lots of sites are plagued by bot activity. The ones hardest hit are the ones that only have email validation.
I could go to Google and create a new account right now, absolutely free.
Hell, I could write a script that creates a million for me for barely any money, just paying a CAPTCHA farm a nominal sum to solve the robot tests for me. This is why sites like discord are plagued with advertisement bots, the bar to entry is literally nothing.
Phone numbers cost money to create, and are in finite supply. Even PAYG (pre paid numbers for you Americans) numbers require you to go outside and purchase a SIM card from a store. They aren’t foolproof, but they stop the vast majority of fake accounts.
CosmicCleric@lemmy.world 9 months ago
But those other websites that suffer the same kind of issues work successfully without asking for a phone number, just via email verification. I don’t see why Discord should be any different.
I understand all of those ramifications, and not arguing against it.
However, it’s moving the onus of dealing with the issue from the website owners to the users who use the website. It causes the users to lose their anonymity, and allows their website usage to be tracked and sold. That’s a step too far.