Discord launches global age verification in March! Without verification, adult content cannot be viewed. The community has uncovered past data leaks and black history.

Discord will launch global age verification in March, and unverified users will be restricted from accessing adult content. This move has sparked dissatisfaction within the community, with netizens digging up past data breaches involving 70,000 users, expressing concerns that uploading identification documents could lead to privacy and security risks.

Discord to Implement Global Age Verification, Unverified Users Default to Teen Status

Popular messaging app Discord, favored by gamers, crypto enthusiasts, and VTubers, announced yesterday (2/9) that starting in early March, it will implement stricter age verification measures worldwide.

To create a safer experience for teenagers, Discord states that users who do not complete age verification will be automatically considered minors and will face restrictions on access to adult content and certain real-time interaction features.

Under this mode, users will be unable to view messages marked as sensitive, enter servers and channels with age restrictions, or speak in “Stage Channels,” and private message (DM) requests will be filtered into a separate inbox, with friend requests accompanied by warning labels.

Image source: Discord announcement

How to complete Discord’s age verification?

To unlock the above restrictions, users must verify their age through two methods: either by providing a selfie for “facial age estimation” or uploading government-issued ID.

Discord emphasizes privacy protection, stating that facial scans are performed only on the user’s device and are not uploaded to servers, and IDs submitted to partners are deleted immediately after verification.

Image source: Discord announcement

Discord Previously Suffered Data Breach of 70,000 Users

Although Discord repeatedly assures the privacy of the verification process, netizens have not forgotten the past incident in October 2025, when a third-party customer service provider, 5CA, was hacked, resulting in a data breach of approximately 70,000 users’ personal information. The leaked data included ID images uploaded for age verification, as well as names, email addresses, and the last four digits of credit card numbers.

Image source: Discord community post

Despite Discord emphasizing that its own system was not compromised and refusing to pay ransom to hackers, the incident proved that handing IDs over to third parties carries significant risks.

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Policy Director Maddie Daly pointed out that the Discord case highlights the need for companies to establish stricter oversight and encryption protections when outsourcing age verification and customer service processes.

Related report:
Discord: Data of 70,000 users’ IDs and last 4 digits of credit cards may have been leaked, affected users notified

VTubers Concerned About Privacy, Netizens Criticize Overreach

Additionally, since Discord users include anonymous creator communities such as many virtual YouTubers (VTubers), who often use virtual avatars to avoid revealing their real identities and prevent doxxing.

Now, Discord’s new policy forces users to upload IDs to platforms with a history of leaks, putting them in a dilemma between “loss of privacy” and “platform functionality.”

Some netizens criticize that Discord is shifting the responsibility of guardianship, originally meant for parents, onto all adult users. By defaulting all adults to a monitored status and requiring personal data submission, this “presumption of guilt” approach is hard to accept.

Where to Draw the Line Between Protecting Youth and Privacy?

The global trend toward tighter age restrictions on social platforms is accelerating. Last year, Discord cooperated with regulations in the UK and Australia to implement similar measures, and the Spanish government is also planning to ban users under 16 from social media.

However, Telegram founder Pavel Durov criticized that such policies, under the guise of protecting minors, are actually government overreach and surveillance tools, threatening online freedom and potentially enabling political censorship.

Unlike measures that only comply passively in regulated regions, Discord is proactively extending its age verification system worldwide, including countries where such restrictions are not legally mandated, likely sparking significant controversy before implementation.

Further reading:
Can VPNs Truly Protect Privacy? IBM Security Executive Breaks Down the Technology and Reveals Hidden Trust Risks