this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2023
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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...

(their email)

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

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You could delete the account.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I want that to be the last resort

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Even if you change the phone number they're going to keep a record of your previous numbers.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

then i guess it would be the same if i "delete" my account?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Correct. You could use GDPR regulations to have them remove all your information once the account's gone.

And then over time frame they are required to forget about you.

But they are never ever ever going to forget a phone number, they will call it a security matter and keep it for anti-fraud purposes. I believe that's allowed.

Basically once your personal information is associated with a online account it is tainted. And if you are worried about your personal information being attached to an account you can no longer use that account because it is in fact tainted forever

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

So i guess i should delete this account and create another one in discord, because what i want to do is to bridge it with matrix. By the way i remember there was a site that could write examples of requests about deleting account informations under the GDPR, do you for istance remember this kind of site because i write like ass when it comes to gdpr requests and i'm not convincing enough to scare them.

edit: i found this useful website https://www.datarequests.org/blog/sample-letter-gdpr-erasure-request/ that writes a complete deletion requests under the gdpr laws. It even lists the data protection officer's email from discord (which is where you should send your GDPR related deletion requests but that's obviously not stated into discord privacy policy) plus other useful informations: https://www.datarequests.org/company/discord

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

GDPR only applies to those in Europe btw. Not everyone can just use gdpr regulations to have their information removed.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

luckily i live in Europe!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

How does discord know you don't live in Europe now? You could have moved recently.