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Rainway forces signing up to Discord in order to delete your account
- Jonnax 6y agoWhat is this company's business model? It makes no sense to me how they plan to make money with something they advertise as completely free
- pret 6y agoAds and Data...beatboxing Ads and Data beatboxing Ads and Data
- NullPrefix 6y agoMaybe this thread is the answer?
- gregoriol 6y agoMaybe Discord should make their Delete your account feature being a signup to Rainway, that would be fair enough
- pensatoio 6y agoMaybe they’re just trying to get bought out?
- hammerton 6y agoLike with most 'free' services, I get the impression that they plan on selling your data. https://rainway.com/privacy/ https://rainway.com/privacy/
- easytiger 6y agoAt a guess the idea is to be bought by Microsoft
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoIt makes sense to a point because Discord is neat and having a ticket system in there is convenient, plus it seems to be a service aimed at gamers, most of which will have a Discord account already (if they're on PC anyway).
- woutr_be 6y agoWhy do they need a ticket system for account deletion? Won’t a normal delete button be good enough? They shouldn’t force their own internal process on to customers, they could easily have that button use the Discord API to create a ticket.
- hadlock 6y agoAccount deletion isn't a very glamorous project and isn't something you can put on your list of yearly accomplishments for a raise. This probably rolled downhill until customer service asked the front end team to put up a static webpage with some crude instructions. I've seen worse, but rarely.
- woutr_be 6y agoThey’ve clearly went through the process of setting this up with Discord, so it sounds like they thought about this. This day and age, I almost expect every product to have a delete button.
- hef19898 6y agoWell, it should be if you ask me. When a user wants to delete his account, it usually is because he isn't happy with the company or the service. I could imagine that by making the deletion as painless and fast as possible, a company could go a long way to regain that user later. Some "sorry to see you leave, but we try to make as easy for you as possible" message and maybe even a goody the user can use elsewhere. After all, the account deletion is an opportunity to get in direct contact with your users in a critical point of the relationship.
- 6y ago
- parsecs 6y agoI'd like to comment that you can use Discord without an account, but yeah that does seem a bit weird
- hddherman 6y agoWhen you click on the link supplied in the Rainway guide, you will be directed to a Discord sign-up form where you have to enter an username and check the box that says that you agree to the terms of service and privacy policy. I'm not familiar with all the configuration options Discord can offer, but in this case it seems you can't bypass account creation here.
- parsecs 6y agoAh they might've changed it to combat bad actors, I haven't tried to use Discord without an account for a while now so sorry about outdated info
- geoah 6y agoI think you are right. You can still have one off sessions but maybe depends on the privacy settings of the server.
- sc11 6y agoThere are several options the 'server' admins can choose from. Some let you do everything without account, some only let you read, and others require an account for everything.
- ccmcarey 6y agoYou can view the server, but you can't write anything, and you can't use reactions, so you will actually need an account to open a ticket.
- aboringusername 6y agoThis is why I'm so glad the GDPR exists. They list their email address in the privacy policy so a quick email should suffice. Obviously you can raise complaints if they do not delete your information as the GDPR does not mandate or expect the individual to have to agree to another parties privacy policy to exercise your rights. You also have rights to access et al and whilst unlikely it's possible failure to act within this law might cause issues later down the line.
- hddherman 6y agoI also found the e-mail after searching the website for a while. It's an odd choice for the location, I assumed that such contact e-mails would be located under Support or Contact sections.
- Nextgrid 6y agoThe problem with the GDPR is that there is no enforcement. At best, you're relying on the other party acting in good faith and wanting to respect the regulation. I've had companies that breached the regulation, complained to them with no effect, raised it with the ICO, they got back to me, upheld my complaint, reached out to the company and still nothing despite them being based in the UK thus enforcing fines is trivial. There is nothing preventing this company from getting back to you saying that "for security reasons (or other BS reason) the Discord-based process is the only way to delete your account" and you wouldn't be able to do anything about it because even the relevant authorities don't seem to care.
- ccsalvesen 6y agoThere has been a number of fines. British Airways is on top of the leaderboard this far with €200M. https://www.enforcementtracker.com/ https://www.enforcementtracker.com/ I'm not sure about how efficient the process is, but there is some enforcement.
- Nextgrid 6y agoIs there even a single fine about Facebook/Google Analytics/Mixpanel/etc tracking? This is one of the major problems with online privacy right now, should be very easy to detect (run a web crawler and look for the analytics code being loaded) and yet nothing is being done.
- blibble 6y agothere's a lot of places like this scaleway force you to add your billing information to delete your account
- the_pwner224 6y agoI'm not accusing hddherman of bad behaviour, but seems like this could be a decent way to advertise/astroturf without raising suspicion. Bring up flaw that, while bad, is irrelevant to most of the target market, and then splatter links over Reddit and HN. The first thing I did after clicking reading the linked page was to go to their homepage and see what the hell Rainway even was. I don't need the service but it seems potentially useful to many.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- pgt 6y agoYes - intentional or not - the same thing happened with the bulletproof glass on the Tesla Cybertruck.
- Kognito 6y agoExactly this. This is an ad, nothing more. “Company uses discord for support system” is uninteresting.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago> see what the hell Rainway even was What's up with all those game streaming services that seem to be popping up everywhere? Was I just not paying attention or is it the new hype of the year?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- andrewmd5 6y agoHi, CEO of Rainway here. You actually don’t need to sign up for Discord, emailing support@rainway.com is enough. You can also close your account from the app. Discord is a convenient medium since our audience largely engages with us through it daily. I’ll update the article to reflect all the valid options. And to be clear, our business model isn’t in data nor do we share data with others. Outside of basic engagement telemetry we don’t even know what games you own.
- wheybags 6y agoSo what is your business model?
- andrewmd5 6y agoEnterprise customers who integrate our technology into their applications and services.
- Etheryte 6y agoIf that's the case, it should be covered in your official documentation. The thread title is spot-on if you don't happen to magically guess that that's also an option.
- aww_dang 6y agoDiscord isn't as bad as far as signups go. I believe you can still use some channels without verifying your email. Meanwhile, telegram and skype require an install. I always dread dealing with a company that only responds to skype requests.