Around 70,000 users affected in Discord related breach which includes some government ID images

Ouch. This whole ongoing online safety thing is going well isn't it? Who could have guessed that some personal data would end up leaking? Everyone with a brain that even remotely understands the internet and technology.

Discord recently announced on October 3rd that a partner they were using for third-party customer service had been compromised. The attackers managed to swipe the likes of contact details, limited billing info, IP addresses, messages with customer service agents, limited corporate data and a "small number of government‑ID images".

Originally the article did not name the company involved, or how many were affected, but it was updated on October 9th to clarify after some misinformation spread online and named "5CA" as the company that was compromised. That and they also now note more clearly that "approximately 70,000" had their government ID photos exposed".

This is all to do with Discord's requirement to verify the age of people in some countries, but this is specifically to do with those who went through customer service for age-related appeals. So to be clear, Discord itself was not compromised, the third-party 5CA were the issue.

A thoroughly frustrating issue. One not just localised to the UK with the Online Safety Act, as more countries and US states have been slowly pushing out age verification requirements to various platforms. This issue of security and privacy is only going to get worse as time goes on. These laws have just added an extra burden to everyone, and made an even bigger target for bad actors to grab even more sensitive personal data from people.