Researchers investigating Discord’s age-verification checks say they discovered an exposed frontend belonging to Persona, the identity-verification vendor used by Discord. It revealed a far more expansive surveillance and financial intelligence stack than a simple “teen safety” tool.
A short while ago we reported that Discord will limit profiles to teen-appropriate mode until you verify your age. That means anyone would wants to continue using Discord as before would have to let it scan their face—and the internet was far from happy.
To analyze these scans, Discord uses biometric identity verification start-up Persona Identities, Inc. a venture that offers Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) solutions that rely on biometric identity checks to estimate a user’s age.
To demonstrate the privacy implications, researchers took a closer look and found a publicly exposed Persona frontend on a US government–authorized server, with 2,456 accessible files.
You read that right. According to researcher “Celeste” the exposed code, which has now been removed, sat at a US government-authorized endpoint that appears to have been isolated from its regular work environment.
In those files, the researchers found details about the extensive surveillance Persona software performs on its users. Beyond checking their age, the software performs 269 distinct verification checks, runs facial recognition against watchlists and politically exposed persons, screens “adverse media” across 14 categories (including terrorism and espionage), and assigns risk and similarity scores.
Persona collects—and can retain for up to three years—IP addresses, browser and device fingerprints, government ID numbers, phone numbers, names, faces, plus a battery of “selfie” analytics like suspicious-entity detection, pose repeat detection, and age inconsistency checks.
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At a time when age verification is very much a hot topic, this is not the kind of news to persuade privacy advocates that age verification is in our best interest. Sending data obtained during age verification checks to data brokers and foreign governments—reportedly Persona was tested by Discord in the UK—will not install the level of trust needed for users to feel comfortable submitting to this kind of scrutiny.
This comes amid broader questions about whether age verification is actually doing what it’s supposed to do. Euronews looked at the effect of Australia’s world-leading ban on social media for under-16s. Australia’s new rules have only been in force for six weeks, but while the country’s internet regulator says it has shut down about 4.7 million accounts held by under‑16s on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, X, Twitch, Reddit, and Threads, children and parents describe a very different reality. Interviews with teenagers, parents and researchers indicate that many children are still accessing banned apps through simple workarounds.
According to The Rage, Discord has stated it will not continue to use Persona for age verification. However, other platforms reported to use Persona include:
- Roblox: Uses Persona’s facial age estimation and ID verification as the core of its “age checks to chat” system.
- OpenAI / ChatGPT: OpenAI’s help center explains that if you need to verify being 18+, “Persona is a trusted third-party company we use to help verify age,” and that Persona may ask for a live selfie and/or government ID.
- Lime: The ride-sharing service deploys custom age verification flows with Persona to meet each region’s unique requirements.
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