2y ago

Discord refuses to remove my phone number attached to my account

Hi, there's this situation i currently have with discord support, that they refuse to delete my phone number from my account. Basically every time i try to manually remove it, my account gets locked up until i add another phone number in order to continue accessing the service, "for security reasons" with no option for email verification (of course).

I contacted the support team asking for clarifications and if they could remove the phone number and, in short, they said that they couldn't do that since my account was flagged somehow, and that they won't remove the phone verification...

Now, what are your opinions about this? Should i use a free voip number site in order to replace my real phone number with the fake one? My concern is that i don't know who could own that number so i don't know if it's safe to trust it, and i'm not willing to spend any money for this

57 comments

Are you from the EU? If so, just threaten them with reporting them to the GDPR people
- luckily i've found this website that could help me with this
  
  That's really helpful, thanks.
- Unfortunately this is not a violation of GDPR unless they refused to delete all of your data.
- The will give exactly 0 fucks about that.
- I wonder if anyone from the US had any luck with these request. Not that it has any jurisdiction but more of a “not my job to sort them" type deal.
You could delete the account.
- I want that to be the last resort
  
  Even if you change the phone number they're going to keep a record of your previous numbers.
delete discord from your life, fuck them
(if that is not an option for you, i understand but can't help unfortunately)
i did when they started to want my phone number
remember to use the GDPR to delete all your data, they need every message id from you for that, but with a bit of cat, grep and sed you can easily get that from a discord data package
- Did you replace discord with something else? Or did you completely delete that kind of social in your internet life?
  
  I use Matrix (with Element client). It's federated like lemmy and it rocks!
  
  Matrix (Element), Telegram and Signal
  but most of it just got deleted
Discord doesn't care about privacy, if you do then Discord isn't the service for you. You could use a burner number, or host your web VoIP server where you don't need to worry about your privacy.
- how can i do that? is it costly?
  
  A service like VoIP.ms you can get a DID (phone number) that supports SMS for a one time fee around $2 and usage fees around $0.001/minute
  
  Best bet is to purchase a prepaid sim card and activate it with an old spare mobile phone (if you have one, that is). This is how you get a "physical" number that's authentic enough for sms verification. This is assuming you live in a place where prepaid sims are sold freely and can be activated without hassles.
  There are websites and applications offering "burner numbers" for situations like this or people living in places that place restrictions in new sim cards. Most of them tend to get their numbers from voip providers sold cheaply. They can work most of the time, but picky organizations like Google and Discord can and will probably detect voip numbers when it's the case.
  My personal experience is that Google doesn't like it and refuse those ones, asking for an actual "physical" phone number. Discord, on the other hand, did accept voip numbers when I tried (around 2 years ago).
  
  The cheapest option would be to just buy a cheap sim and verify the number with discord then throw the sim in the bin.
Probably because they need your phone number to verify the account. If you don’t like it, delete your account (knowing they still have your phone number because you gave it to them).
If you didn’t want them having it, why did you give it to them in the first place?
- because back then i didn't know what privacy on the internet was
One of the servers I’m in requires a phone number in order to post and comment. Glad I never added my number in the first place. OP, I hope you can eventually get your number removed.
- Thanks, this all thing is stressing me out in a way i can't explain to be honest
Discord is the worst, matrix is not the best but way better than discord
- In terms of privacy, sure... but in terms of usage and beauty i sadly say that discord wins. I'm very attached to vencord which has many useful plugins that improve the discord user experience, there won't ever be something similar for matrix, ever
  
  "Ever" may be a bit pessimistic, Cinny is going the right way, not totally there yet, but it is their objective
- Can you have channels grouped under a server/space with it?
If you want to use Discord nowadays you need a valid phone number, that's it.
Either you agree with it and use their service, or you don't and delete your account with all your data.
They use this to battle spam accounts (with quite some success, been over a year since I've been contacted by scammers), there is no good way around it.
- If you want to use Discord nowadays you need a valid phone number, that’s it.
  No you don't. I can use it just fine without a phone number added.
  
  you just have to manage to not let your account flagged, but when that happens (and it will) then it's either voip number or your real phone number
  
  That's an old account then. New ones don't work without. And at some point they suddenly force you to add a number out of nowhere.
that's weird. I just opened discord and deleted my phone number without any issues, just had to type password and 2fa and done. I did it in the android app btw.
- I did it on android too, but that's not it. As i said, my account was flagged for some reason
Their system has "triggered successfully", great news everyone! 😃👍
/s
using a free VoIP number isn't an option cause the moment you remove it discord with boot you off again, and keeping it is a huge security risk.
if you're a new discord account it's (in my experience) not possible to go without a verified phone number, their system is too sensitive
You should probably use a paid-for burner phone number online that's guaranteed to only be used once. There are many services available.
- i prefer to delete my account than spending money on something that they should've just complied with
I'll keep you updated soon, i'm currently waiting for discord dpo department to respond to my second email explicitely requesting the erasure of my account since in the first email they tried to divert the request into suggesting me to contact the privacy email of Discord, but as we all know that email is just for privacy questions and doesn't do erasures of accounts under specific requests or laws by the sender. It's been one week, they still have more or less three weeks left to respond. If they don't i'll take action and report them to the authorities
You use discord. What do you expect?
Can you change it in a non existing number.
- No, it needs to be verified

57 comments