Discord’s Mandatory Face Scan Faces Backlash Amid Data Breach

Discord, the group voice chat platform popular among the young crowd, has announced that it’s going to introduce mandatory age verification on their platform to all users, and by early March, all user’s accounts will be set to a “teen by default” status, until proven otherwise.

Discord had already implemented this measure in countries such as the UK and Australia for complying to their nation’s regulations. The app is now set to roll out the new regulations globally, citing that they care about the safety measures of their teen users. The team decided to announce it ahead of Safer Internet Day, observed on February 10 .

Based on age verification, the user experience will be customized, with new regulations such as content filters, age restricted spaces, friend request alerts, etc. to ensure an age-appropriate and safer experience.

Along with this, it has also proudly announced a Discord Teen council, an advisory body consisting of groups of 10-12 teenagers who will be directly involved in the decision making process to bring out a newer perspective in the implementation of measures and also for the essential functioning of the platform.

However, the move has evoked significant backlash in the context of Discord’s latest data leak.

In October of 2025, one of Discord’s third-party customer service and support providers (5CA) was compromised, and allegedly stole at least 70,000 images of government-issued IDs such as passports or driver’s licenses, etc. used for age verification.

While the platform has assured that it will process the data “quickly” and delete it, users remain unconvinced, and are raising security concerns about uploading their face scans or selfies.