- Hackers are advertising a database with 1.8 billion Discord messages on dark web forums
- It is possible that the scraped data is public
- Discord is expected to shut the service down
Someone is selling almost two billion Discord messages and other data, allegedly scraped from the platform, experts have warned.
Security researchers at Cybernews, who saw an ad on an underground hacking forum for the archive.
The data, most likely scraped from the platform, includes 1.8 billion Discord messages, 35 million users, 207 million voice sessions, and 6,000 Discord servers, and can be obtained for a fee.
A Spy.Pet copycat?
Discord is a communication platform that lets people chat via text, voice, or video, often in servers organized around communities, games, or interests. It’s popular for gaming, social groups, and professional communities alike, and many servers on the platform are public, meaning anyone can join and read the contents, including chat messages, member names, and more.
This also means that much of the data being sold by the miscreants could be public. Still, while the content is technically visible, harvesting it en masse still violates the platform’s Terms of Service, and using it for commercial purposes, or personal data collection, could run into privacy laws like the GDPR or CCPA.
Whether or not the data is public, can only be determined with a detailed analysis, which no one has done at press time. In any case, it is likely Discord will shut it down, similar to how it shut down a previous service that tried the same thing, called Spy.Pet.
In late April 2024, a website that offered billions of Discord chat logs for sale, was taken offline by the chat app provider. Discord accounts associated with the service were banned, and the company confirmed the service breached its ToS:
“Scraping our services and self-botting are violations of our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines,” the company spokesperson said in a statement at the time. “In addition to banning the affiliated accounts, we are considering appropriate legal action.”
You might also like
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/icMmqrWRv5DCff2huqjSGC.jpg
Source link
