How Discord plans to handle the latest wave of scams

polygon.com:

If you’re active on the popular messaging app Discord, you might have noticed a troubling trend. Over the past few months, Discord scams have increased not just in number, but in savviness, as scammers attempt to take advantage of people who might be worried about information or photos of them leaking online. Polygon reached out to the company to ask how it plans to address the scams.

Discord is a messaging app that largely appeals to a younger audience because its features cater to people who play video games and tabletop RPGs. As a result, a prevailing number of scams appear to target the possible anxieties of that younger audience. The newer scams look something like this.

A person will get a message, sometimes from an account that appears to be a mutual friend. This “friend” will contact the person and accuse them of sending private photos. The message is typically accompanied by a link inviting the person to a Discord server, where they are asked to “verify” their account by scanning a QR code. If they scan the code, the scammer will gain access to their account.

These scams can be difficult to identify because the language doesn’t look out of place for the platform, and it touches on realistic anxieties. “Heyy idk what happened or if its really you but it was your name and the same avatar and you sent a girl — stuff like what the fuck,” reads a screenshot of a Discord scam one Twitter user shared. (According to a 2013 report from MTV and the Associated Press, up to 11% of young people between the ages of 14 and 24 have shared naked pictures of themselves.) This particular scam included an invitation to a server called “DISCORD SHAMING.” After the user joined the server, a bot prompted them to scan a QR code.

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