The Online Safety Act

Well it didn't take long for the first high profile data breach, affecting government ID documents demanded by the Online Safety Act, to occur.

It is worth noting that none of the live facial scan data were affected, but government IDs provided as part of Discord's age appeals process were. Discord would not have this information if it weren't for the legislation mentioned above.

GooseOnTheLoose said:

Well it didn't take long for the first high profile data breach, affecting government ID documents demanded by the Online Safety Act, to occur.

It is worth noting that none of the live facial scan data were affected, but government IDs provided as part of Discord's age appeals process were. Discord would not have this information if it weren't for the legislation mentioned above.

Proof-of-age ID leaked in Discord data breach

Video game chat platform tells users that driver’s licences and passports were among the forms of data accessed via a third-party customer service provider

www.theguardian.com

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The sad thing is that this was entirely predictable.

Anyone with much technical know-how could have told you that this age verification malarkey was a data breach waiting to happen, and given that I was concerned about this potential prior to the law taking effect, this news does not surprise me at all, unfortunately.

And wouldn't you know it, Discord suddenly changed their T&Cs to say that you can't sue them.

This is only the beginning.

DiogoJ42 said:

And wouldn't you know it, Discord suddenly changed their T&Cs to say that you can't sue them.

This is only the beginning.

Click to expand...

That won't fly in the UK and you can certainly make a complaint to the ICO.

TBH, it's the government we should be suing. But I'll stop there. I'm on enough lists already.

GooseOnTheLoose said:

Well it didn't take long for the first high profile data breach, affecting government ID documents demanded by the Online Safety Act, to occur.

It is worth noting that none of the live facial scan data were affected, but government IDs provided as part of Discord's age appeals process were. Discord would not have this information if it weren't for the legislation mentioned above.

Proof-of-age ID leaked in Discord data breach

Video game chat platform tells users that driver’s licences and passports were among the forms of data accessed via a third-party customer service provider

www.theguardian.com

Click to expand...

I think it’s worth pointing out the terminology here, it’s government mandated ID systems based on a stupid law. This isn’t a breach of government ID documents themselves (putting aside the digital ID proposals we have multiple ID documents the government control already so the clarification is important).

Dave said:

I think it’s worth pointing out the terminology here, it’s government mandated ID systems based on a stupid law. This isn’t a breach of government ID documents themselves (putting aside the digital ID proposals we have multiple ID documents the government control already so the clarification is important).

Click to expand...

It was a breach of Discord's ticketing system, where they ask you to upload photographs of your government ID to appeal their facial recognition checks.

In this data breach, photographs of people's driving licences and passports got leaked. The verification information did not get leaked, but copies of actual documents did.

GooseOnTheLoose said:

It was a breach of Discord's ticketing system, where they ask you to upload photographs of your government ID to appeal their facial recognition checks.

In this data breach, photographs of people's driving licences and passports got leaked. The verification information did not get leaked, but copies of actual documents did.

Click to expand...

Yeah you might not agree but to me your wording suggested the government ID system itself was breached, rather than copies of government issues ID have been leaked. There have been breaches of companies holding copies of government ID before this shockingly bad law was created.

Dave said:

Yeah you might not agree but to me your wording suggested the government ID system itself was breached, rather than copies of government issues ID have been leaked. There have been breaches of companies holding copies of government ID before this shockingly bad law was created.

Click to expand...

I do disagree, as I was particularly careful in my wording to state that government identification documents provided as part of Discord's age appeals process were affected. I did not insinuate that the government's own systems were breached. I also linked to an article which explained the leak in detail.

There have been breaches of companies holding copies of government identification documents before, but this thread is specific to the Online Safety Act and I hadn't suggested that this was unique.

One of the consequences of this legislation is that more companies, data holders and processors will have copies of government issued identification documents. This type of information has always been particularly sought after and targeted. There is now an exponentially increased risk that your most sensitive information will be breached and leaked, a risk which wasn't as prevalent before the Online Safety Act.