• by Colin Kirkland , 4 hours ago

After announcing its global mandatory age-verification rollout, Discord has distanced itself from leading third-party age-verification partner Persona following a wave of backlash from users based in the U.K., who expressed concern with its privacy policies.

Two weeks ago, Discord announced that all new and existing users would receive a “teen-appropriate experience by default” delivered automatically beginning in March. To be confirmed as an adult, users would have to complete an age-verification process.

Users shared immediate concerns over a leak of 70,000 Discord user government IDs from October when a former Discord age check partner was hacked.

In response, Discord stated that most users would be able to prove their age without the submission of IDs.

However, users discovered an archived disclaimer that Discord chose to delete on February 15, which explains that “if you're located in the UK, you may be part of an experiment where your information will be processed by an age-assurance vendor, Persona.”

“The information you submit will be temporarily stored for up to 7 days, then be deleted,” the statement continues. “For ID document verification, all details are blurred except your photo and date of birth, so only what's truly needed for age verification is used.”

Aside from this deleted statement on its FAQ page, Discord failed to list Persona – currently used by Roblox and Reddit, and backed by Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel -- as a partner on its platform.

Furthermore, users highlighted Persona's privacy policy, which says the company may collect personal user data through “third party databases, government records, and other publicly available sources.”

According to a report from Ars Technica, a Discord spokesperson says the U.K. experiment ran for less than a month, while Persona no longer remains an active vendor partnering with the company.

Persona CEO Rick Song informed Ars Technica that the data of verified individuals involved in Discord’s U.K.-based test was deleted upon verification.

Persona is also under fire due to a string of code discovered by The Rage, an independent publication that reports on financial surveillance, that allegedly makes Discord user files accessible to federal agencies, via OpenAI, of which Persona is a listed partner.

According to The Rage, the publicly exposed domain may “query identity verification requests on an OpenAI database” connected to software called “withpersona-gov.com.”

Christie Kim, Persona's chief operating officer, stated in an email that these have been “misleading claims,” adding that Persona is not partnered with federal agencies, including “ICE or any agency within the Department of Homeland Security.”

“We're regularly evaluating vendor partners to improve our age assurance experience and expand user options while prioritizing privacy,” concludes Discord’s head of product policy Savannah Badalich.