Discord has unexpectedly been the target of data scraping, hitting users on a wide scale. The company has issued a statement after messages and voice data of 620 million users had been archived and sold by bot accounts.
Earlier this month, 404 Media (seen by Eurogamer) reported that an online service known as Spy Pet had been archiving and tracking upwards of four billion messages and user activity (including voice channels). Many of Discord’s largest servers, including the Minecraft and Among Us fell victim to Spy Pet’s tracking.
Data is said to have been packaged and sold for as little as $5 USD (around $6.83 CAD). The initial report explains that Spy Pet sells data to third parties to train AI models and assist law enforcement agencies, or anyone willing to buy with crypto. This means that the police could use stolen data to look up specific activity of a user.
Discord has taken immediate action and provided a statement on the matter. Firstly, the company responsible for providing a free platform for messaging and video calls has banned the accounts responsible. Discord is also said to be considering legal action.
“Our Safety team has been diligently investigating this activity, and we identified certain accounts that we believe are affiliated with the Spy.pet website, which we have subsequently banned,” a Discord spokesperson said to 404 Media.
“Based on our investigation, the accounts accessed Discord servers that were open and available for anyone to join or where the accounts had easy access to a valid invite link. Once in these spaces, these accounts could only access the same information as any other user in those servers.”
Thankfully, it’s believed that data scrapers were unable to access and archive any private messages shared on Discord. Personal data or log in credientials all appear to be secure as well. The stolen data appears to solely revolve around what user’s shared publically across popular servers and on their profile. However, users are encouraged to stay vigilant as the owner of Spy Pet is said to be a member of Kiwi Farms. This forum site is known for harassment campaigns and stalking.
