Hackers Say They Breached Persona, Raising Concerns About Discord Verification

Discord users recently saw prompts to submit personal information to Persona, a third‑party age‑verification service. As Discord moves toward universal age checks, the measures drew scrutiny after earlier security failures. Now three hacktivists say they breached Persona and examined how the company handles submitted biometrics, and they say their findings point to broader privacy concerns.

The researchers reported weak front‑end security and found that Persona’s monitoring went beyond age checks. Faces and other biometrics were not only scanned for age but flagged for 'suspicious behavior' and compared against watchlists. "It was initially meant to be a passive recon investigation," one researcher, vmfunc, wrote, "that quickly turned into a rabbit hole deep dive into how commercial AI and federal government operations work together to violate our privacy every waking second." Persona received $150 million in 2021 from the Founders Fund, led by Peter Thiel.

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