8 ms·

Tell HN: Discord is permanently locking out users with multiple accounts

77 points by lynndotpy 4y ago

I used Discord's new account switcher feature and, shortly after, I was locked out of both accounts for phone number verification. Specifically, each account requires a separate phone number, and I am not banned for a ToS violation. After trying several different methods (including buying a second cell phone plan) I have been unable to access my accounts. Over a few weeks with support, I've spent money and several hours on my end, to no avail. From our conversation, I understand this triggered a false positive on their "suspicious activity detection system". They couldn't tell me what triggered it, and I have not broken the ToS (no unofficial client), and they cannot remove the hold, and paying for Discord Nitro does not let you keep access. This is especially painful because it's cut me off from friends and certain developer communities. From what I see from posts on other social media, this is not an uncommon occurrence. Has anyone else had these issues? If so, has anyone had luck getting this resolved?

branon 4y ago
Isn't there some fosscord that exists? Put IM and voice in the same darktheme JS page and you've got a viable clone
- lynndotpy 4y ago
  Unfortunately, even if Fosscord was a perfect clone, I can't just spin up an instance and expect all my friends and communities to migrate :(
  - hammyhavoc 4y ago
    Element (a Matrix client) can be used with a Discord bridge on your own server. I've even bridged Facebook Messenger et al to it. Only install one messaging/VoIP app per device. Battery life much better as a result.
nathanaldensr 4y ago
Discord's phone verification is ridiculous, buggy, and insane. Sorry, Discord, but nearly everyone with a phone has a single phone number. Also, once you verify with one phone number there is something like a seven- or ten-day waiting period (forgive me; I don't remember the actual number) before you can use it to verify another account. Time for Discord to be disrupted!
- gtoast 4y ago
  Been trying to verify my phone number on my personal account for literally years. Every few months I give it a shot and it’s always the same. The fact that I used my phone number on my work account prevents me from verifying my personal account. If Discord thinks I’m going to purchase a second phone line to verify my Discord account they’re insane.
  - Asraelite 4y ago
    There are sites which provide a temporary phone number for account verification for a small fee. I don't know any off the top of my head but they're easy to google. They often also accept crypto if you want to really retain anonymity. Effectively this means you pay $0.50 or whatever per extra account you want to have. I really wish sites offered this option directly to customers so you wouldn't have to use these shady services. The primary purpose of phone verification is just to make the cost of creating a spambot greater than it's worth for the spammer, so they should have no probably simply accepting money instead of a phone number. The only service I know of that adopts this approach is Threema.
    - ranger_danger 4y ago
      Exactly zero of those sites provide non-voip SMS numbers, which are what's required by Discord and the like. They can detect when a number is really VoIP-based and they block all of them.
      - Asraelite 4y ago
        Are you sure? I'm not talking about the ones that offer a permanent number that can be reused, just those for one-off verification. I've verified with them successfully on Discord multiple times.
      - ev1 4y ago
        There are plenty that provide non-voip numbers, but Discord will randomly challenge you later on if you do things like VPN heavily or block fingerprinting and if you can't access the number your account is toast.
tenryuu 4y ago
I haven't used the native token switcher at all, but I've never had an issue running multiple instances of discord on the same machine to login into multiple accounts simultaneously (3 canary instances)
rubyist5eva 4y ago
trash software and a trash company that can’t make money that won’t be around much longer
aendruk 4y ago
Amazon trampled me in a similar way when they permanently disabled my account “due to inactivity”. Customer support said to just create a new account with another phone number. As if I have another phone number.
- antifa 4y ago
  There's no guarantee your replacement phone number isn't already used in someone else's inactive amazon account.
EddieDante 4y ago
This is what you get for using Discord, and for having friends who choose to use bad software. It's a self-inflicted First World Problem.
- nyx 4y ago
  "Sorry, we can't be friends anymore, you use bad software." Look, I guess I kind of get what you're saying, but unless you're Stallman this kind of lifestyle just isn't viable. Real people just want to use the thing that's easy to set up, good enough for their uses, and most importantly already popular. Network effects are a real showstopper for those of us who'd like to move to FOSS alternatives, and when the options are to either use the popular thing and communicate with our friends, or insist on the FOSS thing and isolate ourselves, it takes more zealotry than most of us can muster to commit to the latter.
  - EddieDante 4y ago
    I didn't have friends before Discord existed, so I never had a reason to use it. Network effects don't mean shit when you lean into capitalist atomization.
    - tenryuu 4y ago
      With an attitude like that I'm not surprised
  - ls15 4y ago
    > Real people just want to use the thing that's easy to set up, good enough for their uses, and most importantly already popular. In reality this is not one app, but Skype AND Facebook Messenger AND Discord AND Zoom AND Teams AND Whatsapp AND ... I am really glad that the EU is now requiring messenger bridging by regulation, so people don't have to install an ever-increasing number of spyware apps, just to be able to talk to their families, friends and colleagues.
    - shreyshnaccount 4y ago
gnu8 4y ago
What you are running into is that every supposed feature of Discord and Slack is actually a fatal bug. There is no replacement for IRC.
- Mandatum 4y ago
  This point of view is so tired. It's the same mindset of those who long for the days of BBS.
  - hammyhavoc 4y ago
    I think people long for the cultural and social zeitgeist more than they do the platform and technology itself.
  - opan 4y ago
    IRC works extremely well and has the best clients of any chat protocol. I also use XMPP and Matrix, but they always feel rough by comparison and have issues. Crashing, message delays, no good way to look through logs locally and quickly, etc. IRC is of course simpler, but it really sticks out how polished irssi and weechat are.
    - ranger_danger 4y ago
      I just wish there was a way to bridge Matrix into IRC, instead of the other way around. I want to use my IRC client to join arbitrary Matrix channels.
      - Arathorn 4y ago
        https://github.com/progval/matrix2051 https://github.com/progval/matrix2051 might be what you’re after
        ranger_danger 4y ago
        Neat but it appears too broken to use. It crashes every time I connect to the IRC port it listens on.
hammyhavoc 4y ago
Just sounds like yet another reason to use Matrix.org to be honest.
- lynndotpy 4y ago
  I'd prefer that, but nobody I know uses it :( I got invited to a probabilistic machine learning study group my uni is running, but couldn't access because of this issue. It'd be a big ask to get them to set up a matrix bridge
  - hammyhavoc 4y ago
    Bridge it yourself via Discord or whatever platform they're using. I have a bunch of accounts on each platform that I'm bridging through a Matrix server. Can run it in a Docker, or via an Ansible playbook complete with all the bridges. Can run on something as simple as a Pi.
    - ls15 4y ago
      How do you do that if Discord is locking your account?
      - hammyhavoc 4y ago
        It isn't going to work if the account is already locked. Need another number? Use a free SIP service.
        herbst 4y ago
        And repeat once you get banned again, because your new number directly put you on a blacklist. What a time to be alive!
        ranger_danger 4y ago
        Doesn't work, they will only verify real, non-voip SMS numbers.
herbst 4y ago
Discord says my phone number is not valid. I am glad they know better than me. It's a horrible platform with zero actual customer support. It's just important to realize that Discord is and always will be a throwaway account you can't trust to keep
- Digital28 4y ago
  This isn't just a Discord problem, it's a consumer rights problem. I've gone through this same thing with multiple companies, most recently after an identity theft, and the only recourse for consumers at this point is to indefinitely wage a campaign of turning a grievous issue into such a massive PR and/or legal department war that they have no choice but to attempt resolution.
ldng 4y ago
Well, never give your phone unless it is a very critical account/service and thus avoid a shit ton of stupid bugs anywhere.
donkarma 4y ago
https://smspva.com https://smspva.com Use a phone number that your current IP is in. Alternatively make a new account on a residential IP and idle for about a week and don't message anyone you're not friends with
- dr_kiszonka 4y ago
  Thanks for sharing the link! I have some difficulty figuring out how that service works. I would like to create a second Google account, which requires a phone number to receive security codes. If you have a minute, could you please explain how to go about it and how much it would cost me, say, per year?
  - ev1 4y ago
    They are for one time verification for spam accounts, not legitimate or long term use. If you are Western based I would really not send money to them at risk of your payment accounts getting hit with "sanctioned" problems.
    - dr_kiszonka 4y ago
      Ah, that's a pity. Thanks for explaining it to me!
- Tijdreiziger 4y ago
  This seems somewhat shady. Are the numbers obtained by legitimate means or are they using 'residential proxy'-style malware? [1] [1] ref: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32139986 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32139986
egberts1 4y ago
Like Netflix’s overzealous identification of individual users (spread out over multiple households), Discord too will face declining users. Not sure what the business model is anymore but this sure isn’t about revenue. I’ve dropped Discord since phone number requirement was added.
burnerburnito 4y ago
While I personally don't use twitter, a sad reality is often people get better tech support from making a fuss about a shitty situation on twitter while pinging companies' accounts publically and challenging them to fix it. I'm not sure if it will help you, but it's worth a try, or at least trying to get someone else to make just such a fuss to get proper attention.
shaggie76 4y ago
I had a similar but less harsh experience -- just my alt got locked -- and it sounds like I was lucky. I'm sorry to hear that you're having a worse time of it. I brought this up with our Discord contacts to suggest that there was a problem with their system (we integrated a bunch of stuff into our game so I had people I could talk to). It took about a about a month of polite follow-ups to finally get my alt account unlocked and get told that they were looking at what caused the problem. I tried, as politely as possible, to explain that if you need a separate phone number for each account then their newly minted alt-account switcher was nearly useless and that they might want to rethink things. It did motivate me to investigate what alternatives there were, and I was dismayed at the lack of options. I'd be happy to hear any suggestions I might have overlooked.
freemint 4y ago
Did you at any point use a third-party client?
- lynndotpy 4y ago
  Not at any time, ever. I didn't even know about them until after I got locked out.
ironmagma 4y ago
Which is ironic, since the only reason I have multiple accounts is because Discord’s UX is such crap. I didn’t even intend to create them.

77 points by lynndotpy 4y ago

branon 4y ago

Isn't there some fosscord that exists? Put IM and voice in the same darktheme JS page and you've got a viable clone

lynndotpy 4y ago
Unfortunately, even if Fosscord was a perfect clone, I can't just spin up an instance and expect all my friends and communities to migrate :(
- hammyhavoc 4y ago
  Element (a Matrix client) can be used with a Discord bridge on your own server. I've even bridged Facebook Messenger et al to it. Only install one messaging/VoIP app per device. Battery life much better as a result.

nathanaldensr 4y ago

Discord's phone verification is ridiculous, buggy, and insane. Sorry, Discord, but nearly everyone with a phone has a single phone number. Also, once you verify with one phone number there is something like a seven- or ten-day waiting period (forgive me; I don't remember the actual number) before you can use it to verify another account. Time for Discord to be disrupted!

gtoast 4y ago
Been trying to verify my phone number on my personal account for literally years. Every few months I give it a shot and it’s always the same. The fact that I used my phone number on my work account prevents me from verifying my personal account. If Discord thinks I’m going to purchase a second phone line to verify my Discord account they’re insane.
- Asraelite 4y ago
  There are sites which provide a temporary phone number for account verification for a small fee. I don't know any off the top of my head but they're easy to google. They often also accept crypto if you want to really retain anonymity. Effectively this means you pay $0.50 or whatever per extra account you want to have. I really wish sites offered this option directly to customers so you wouldn't have to use these shady services. The primary purpose of phone verification is just to make the cost of creating a spambot greater than it's worth for the spammer, so they should have no probably simply accepting money instead of a phone number. The only service I know of that adopts this approach is Threema.
  - ranger_danger 4y ago
    Exactly zero of those sites provide non-voip SMS numbers, which are what's required by Discord and the like. They can detect when a number is really VoIP-based and they block all of them.
    - Asraelite 4y ago
      Are you sure? I'm not talking about the ones that offer a permanent number that can be reused, just those for one-off verification. I've verified with them successfully on Discord multiple times.
    - ev1 4y ago
      There are plenty that provide non-voip numbers, but Discord will randomly challenge you later on if you do things like VPN heavily or block fingerprinting and if you can't access the number your account is toast.

tenryuu 4y ago

I haven't used the native token switcher at all, but I've never had an issue running multiple instances of discord on the same machine to login into multiple accounts simultaneously (3 canary instances)

rubyist5eva 4y ago

trash software and a trash company that can’t make money that won’t be around much longer

aendruk 4y ago

Amazon trampled me in a similar way when they permanently disabled my account “due to inactivity”. Customer support said to just create a new account with another phone number. As if I have another phone number.

antifa 4y ago
There's no guarantee your replacement phone number isn't already used in someone else's inactive amazon account.

EddieDante 4y ago

This is what you get for using Discord, and for having friends who choose to use bad software. It's a self-inflicted First World Problem.

nyx 4y ago
"Sorry, we can't be friends anymore, you use bad software." Look, I guess I kind of get what you're saying, but unless you're Stallman this kind of lifestyle just isn't viable. Real people just want to use the thing that's easy to set up, good enough for their uses, and most importantly already popular. Network effects are a real showstopper for those of us who'd like to move to FOSS alternatives, and when the options are to either use the popular thing and communicate with our friends, or insist on the FOSS thing and isolate ourselves, it takes more zealotry than most of us can muster to commit to the latter.
- EddieDante 4y ago
  I didn't have friends before Discord existed, so I never had a reason to use it. Network effects don't mean shit when you lean into capitalist atomization.
  - tenryuu 4y ago
    With an attitude like that I'm not surprised
- ls15 4y ago
  > Real people just want to use the thing that's easy to set up, good enough for their uses, and most importantly already popular. In reality this is not one app, but Skype AND Facebook Messenger AND Discord AND Zoom AND Teams AND Whatsapp AND ... I am really glad that the EU is now requiring messenger bridging by regulation, so people don't have to install an ever-increasing number of spyware apps, just to be able to talk to their families, friends and colleagues.
  - shreyshnaccount 4y ago

gnu8 4y ago

What you are running into is that every supposed feature of Discord and Slack is actually a fatal bug. There is no replacement for IRC.

Mandatum 4y ago
This point of view is so tired. It's the same mindset of those who long for the days of BBS.
- hammyhavoc 4y ago
  I think people long for the cultural and social zeitgeist more than they do the platform and technology itself.
- opan 4y ago
  IRC works extremely well and has the best clients of any chat protocol. I also use XMPP and Matrix, but they always feel rough by comparison and have issues. Crashing, message delays, no good way to look through logs locally and quickly, etc. IRC is of course simpler, but it really sticks out how polished irssi and weechat are.
  - ranger_danger 4y ago
    I just wish there was a way to bridge Matrix into IRC, instead of the other way around. I want to use my IRC client to join arbitrary Matrix channels.
    - Arathorn 4y ago
      https://github.com/progval/matrix2051 https://github.com/progval/matrix2051 might be what you’re after
      - ranger_danger 4y ago
        Neat but it appears too broken to use. It crashes every time I connect to the IRC port it listens on.

hammyhavoc 4y ago

Just sounds like yet another reason to use Matrix.org to be honest.

lynndotpy 4y ago
I'd prefer that, but nobody I know uses it :( I got invited to a probabilistic machine learning study group my uni is running, but couldn't access because of this issue. It'd be a big ask to get them to set up a matrix bridge
- hammyhavoc 4y ago
  Bridge it yourself via Discord or whatever platform they're using. I have a bunch of accounts on each platform that I'm bridging through a Matrix server. Can run it in a Docker, or via an Ansible playbook complete with all the bridges. Can run on something as simple as a Pi.
  - ls15 4y ago
    How do you do that if Discord is locking your account?
    - hammyhavoc 4y ago
      It isn't going to work if the account is already locked. Need another number? Use a free SIP service.
      - herbst 4y ago
        And repeat once you get banned again, because your new number directly put you on a blacklist. What a time to be alive!
      - ranger_danger 4y ago
        Doesn't work, they will only verify real, non-voip SMS numbers.

herbst 4y ago

Discord says my phone number is not valid. I am glad they know better than me. It's a horrible platform with zero actual customer support. It's just important to realize that Discord is and always will be a throwaway account you can't trust to keep

Digital28 4y ago
This isn't just a Discord problem, it's a consumer rights problem. I've gone through this same thing with multiple companies, most recently after an identity theft, and the only recourse for consumers at this point is to indefinitely wage a campaign of turning a grievous issue into such a massive PR and/or legal department war that they have no choice but to attempt resolution.

ldng 4y ago

Well, never give your phone unless it is a very critical account/service and thus avoid a shit ton of stupid bugs anywhere.

donkarma 4y ago

https://smspva.com https://smspva.com Use a phone number that your current IP is in. Alternatively make a new account on a residential IP and idle for about a week and don't message anyone you're not friends with

dr_kiszonka 4y ago
Thanks for sharing the link! I have some difficulty figuring out how that service works. I would like to create a second Google account, which requires a phone number to receive security codes. If you have a minute, could you please explain how to go about it and how much it would cost me, say, per year?
- ev1 4y ago
  They are for one time verification for spam accounts, not legitimate or long term use. If you are Western based I would really not send money to them at risk of your payment accounts getting hit with "sanctioned" problems.
  - dr_kiszonka 4y ago
    Ah, that's a pity. Thanks for explaining it to me!
Tijdreiziger 4y ago
This seems somewhat shady. Are the numbers obtained by legitimate means or are they using 'residential proxy'-style malware? [1] [1] ref: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32139986 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32139986

egberts1 4y ago

Like Netflix’s overzealous identification of individual users (spread out over multiple households), Discord too will face declining users. Not sure what the business model is anymore but this sure isn’t about revenue. I’ve dropped Discord since phone number requirement was added.

burnerburnito 4y ago

While I personally don't use twitter, a sad reality is often people get better tech support from making a fuss about a shitty situation on twitter while pinging companies' accounts publically and challenging them to fix it. I'm not sure if it will help you, but it's worth a try, or at least trying to get someone else to make just such a fuss to get proper attention.

shaggie76 4y ago

I had a similar but less harsh experience -- just my alt got locked -- and it sounds like I was lucky. I'm sorry to hear that you're having a worse time of it. I brought this up with our Discord contacts to suggest that there was a problem with their system (we integrated a bunch of stuff into our game so I had people I could talk to). It took about a about a month of polite follow-ups to finally get my alt account unlocked and get told that they were looking at what caused the problem. I tried, as politely as possible, to explain that if you need a separate phone number for each account then their newly minted alt-account switcher was nearly useless and that they might want to rethink things. It did motivate me to investigate what alternatives there were, and I was dismayed at the lack of options. I'd be happy to hear any suggestions I might have overlooked.

freemint 4y ago

Did you at any point use a third-party client?

lynndotpy 4y ago
Not at any time, ever. I didn't even know about them until after I got locked out.

ironmagma 4y ago

Which is ironic, since the only reason I have multiple accounts is because Discord’s UX is such crap. I didn’t even intend to create them.