Discord Tests Facial Scans For Age Verification Raising Privacy Concerns
Discord says users will be prompted to verify their age when encountering two situations in particular. The first is when users “encounter content flagged by our sensitive media filter,” while the second is “when you try to change your sensitive content filter settings.” While the rollout appears limited, it’s not hard to imagine that having to pass some form of age verification will become a requirement to even start using the service.
When a user runs into the situations described by Discord, there will be two options presented to them to verify their age. The first option will be to perform a face scan, which will require the user to grant the app camera permissions and follow a set of on-screen instructions. The other option is to take a picture of an approved form of ID, which will then be scanned and submitted to the company. Once either of these options are completed a user will be placed into an age group that will determine what kinds of content they can access.
There are obvious privacy concerns regarding these processes. To try and calm users, Discord says that this data “is only used for the one-time age verification process and is not stored by Discord or its vendor.” It adds that the face scanning is performed completely on-device, and that the company will not have access to that biometric information. Whichever form of ID is submitted is also supposed to be deleted once the age verification is complete.
While this is limited to Australia and the UK for now, it wouldn't be surprising to see this rollout to more countries moving forward, assuming it works as intended.
