It is a common misconception that facts are reported because they are surprising. Facts are reported because they are important. More and more governments are passing age verification laws which put exactly this data in to the hands of even more shady private companies. This breach serves as evidence that those laws are misguided, and spreading news of this event may help build public support for those efforts.
This is the essential point, and why it’s always a bit frustrating seeing ‘is anyone surprised’ take come up so often here. It lowers the quality of the possible discussion by trivialising it.
Wonder if this will cause a surge in demand for fake IDs that are sufficient for age-verification but harmless if leaked.
Heck, i would like a fake name, social security number, and birthdate as well while I am at it
In the example you give there is no needed provision to store the id or all information in the document. Only extracting the date of birth, name and document number is sufficient.
Yes I know this a utopia and it won't happen.
Edit: afaik storing the photo is only needed in medical cases to alternatively asses having the correct person. Bit much for something simple as age verification.
This breach is them being irresponsible with customer support software. In the case of automated age verification, the providers say that nothing identifiable gets stored and they might be lying but it’s feasible that you could run that service the way they say they do.
This breach is about the manual alternative to that, where you can appeal to Discord customer support if the automated thing says you’re not the right age. They seem to do that in part by having you send a picture of your ID.
I’m sure in their database they’re then just storing the date of birth etc, but then they obviously just don’t bother deleting the private image from the customer service software.
Sounds like a great use case for an automated ML cleanup/reporting feature. Maybe as a daemon as a bolt-on fix, or integrated as a feature into the support software itself.
Add in blockchain and we’ll be all set.
Even then, for age verification, just verify the ID, record + sign the verification, and DESTROY THE DATA! Don't retain the original document "just in case", or even the birthday or name.
> Facts are reported because they are important.
Without going too much off-topic: In a vacuum, you are right. In reality, facts are reported because they sell.
It is a good day when important facts like this one happen to coincide with what people what to know more about. (the recent UK attempt at stripping the rights of its citizens)
Tomorrow, people will have forgotten all about it, and the government can continue to expand its powers without anyone talking about it.