Discord’s August 2025 Policy update: UK ID checks and new ad targeting controls
Categories: Data, Data Privacy, Digital Footprint, Discord, Policy, Privacy Guides, Redact Features, Social Media, Social Media Management, Surveillance
Discord rolled out a set of policy updates that touch safety, identity checks, and how they use data to power sponsored content. Two changes matter most for privacy minded users: new age verification for the United Kingdom and broader data use for ad targeting and ‘Quest’ measurement.
We’ve broken down both of these core updates, what data is involved, risks, and practical actions you can take to keep your privacy intact.
UK ID checks in the UK
Discord has joined YouTube, Spotify, Reddit, BlueSky, and many other platforms – implementing age verification checks that require ID, selfies, or sometimes both. Fortunately, in Discord’s case, it seems as though the rollout of this feature will be narrowly scoped, and privacy-first.
Age verification has largely pushed by UK and Australian governments under the rationale of protecting minors on the internet, these policies tend to avoid the most harmful corners of the internet while pushing major platforms to capture highly sensitive data. This could create honeypots for attackers – databases containing massive volumes of data that can be used to defraud users (similar to the Tea App breach).
To be clear – protecting minors from harmful content on the internet is a positive direction. However, effectiveness is not determined by how positive the direction is; what matters is how its implemented & enforced.
Discord Age Verification Policy Update
UK users will experience a new age verification flow, asking them to confirm if they are 18 or older. Safety settings for UK users will also be tightened by default; filtering potentially sensitive content.
A verified ‘adult’ status is required to access blocked content and exercise full control over your Discord account.
What data is involved in Discord age verification?
Discord will offer either a face or ID scan option for age verification; you will need to either provide a selfie for scanning, or a photo of your ID.
They are partnering with k-ID to deliver this feature. Discord and K-ID have said ID images and selfies won’t be stored permanently. They will be purged after verification is complete, and the verification process will occur on your device. Keeping the process local is a big win for the privacy of UK-based Discord users; it significantly reduces the likelihood that this data will fall into the wrong hands.
What does Discord’s age verification mean for people?
If you’re a Discord user in the UK, here’s what you should expect;
- Stronger age gating for content and servers
- A persistent “verified adult” flag linked to your account
- More friction if you want to relax your account settings
Should UK verification or account records get leaked or harvested by an attacker, they will likely be able to filter the records based on age category (adult or minor). While this isn’t as concerning as your ID, a selfie, or even your actual date of birth, it’s still another piece of metadata that can be leveraged by scammers and criminals.
What should you do about Discord age verification?
The reality is, this will become a requirement for UK users (and eventually, something similar for Australian Discord users). At some point, these policies will likely extend to most of the world.
While it is unlikely to influence age verification, you should review your privacy settings in Discord, especially after the update reaches your account. If you verify, store any confirmation securely and avoid additional checks, or performing checks on multiple accounts.
Parents and teens should keep strict defaults, limit server invites and lock DMs to friends only.
Ad targeting updates
With an IPO on the horizon, Discord is investing in ‘improvements’ to their sponsored content; advertising that Discord sell to other companies. In context, this means capturing more of your data, aggregating and sharing it with a ‘measurement partner’, and acquiring data from other sources to infer more information about their users.
Discord has also been the target of multiple scraping attacks this year alone, capturing billions of messages in public servers.
Discord’s Policy change
Discord plans to refine sponsored content and “Quests” with improved personalization. Effectively, broadening their data policies in an attempt to understand and infer more about their user’s interests and behavior, so they can be targeted with more specific advertising.
The good news – new privacy settings will also roll out additional privacy features to help users manage their privacy. It’s unclear what the default status will be, but regardless you should keep a close eye on your accounts Data & Privacy settings.
Make sure you read the subtext – in the example below (09/02/2025), In-game rewards (aka Quests) is a personalization feature – not just for quests in general. Use data to personalize my Discord experience is framed as separate to the personalization of Quests. Confused? Turn them all off.
What Discord data is involved
Discord will capture and utilize data such as;
- server joins
- time spent in channels
- Quest participation and progress
- connected accounts and gameplay
Some of this data will be tied directly to your account, while also being aggregated into a data set for Discord’s ‘measurement partner’ to analyze.
Data that Discord captures will be supplemented with acquired ‘partner data’, which will be used to infer the ‘interests’ of their users for ad relevance. It’s unclear if this will be tied directly to user accounts, but it’s not an unreasonable assumption given ‘interests’ are considerably easier to leverage when tied to a specific user.
What the Discord policy updates mean for people
While these changes will help deliver a more personalized Discord experience, it comes at the cost of your privacy and anonymity. Specifically, Discord will know more about you – for example; your preferences, interests, the types of ads you engage with.
At the end of the day, trading your privacy for more relevant ads sounds like a bad deal to us.
What to do about the Discord policy update
There is a handful of steps you can take right now to keep your data secure on Discord;
- Open Data Privacy Controls and turn off any personalization you do not want.
- Review Activity Settings and disconnect accounts you no longer use.
- Avoid engaging with Quests if you prefer minimal tracking.
- Clear old connections and prune servers that no longer serve you.
Conclusion
Discord’s UK age checks aim to satisfy safety laws, while the ad updates aim to make sponsored content more effective. Both changes concentrate more value in your account data. The safest move is to set every new toggle with intent, minimize shared signals, and keep only the connections you need.
How Redact can help
A smaller public footprint limits what platforms and partners can infer about you.
- Bulk delete old posts, comments, replies, and reactions across many platforms in one run.
- Target specific risks with filters for keywords, phrases, hashtags, and date ranges.
- Schedule recurring cleanups so new activity does not pile up.
- Clean linked accounts that might feed interest profiles, including gaming and social integrations.
- Keep a quiet, boring footprint that is safer for job searches, school applications, and community moderation.
With our app, Redact, you can automate the whole process. We help you scan and bulk delete content from all major social and productivity platforms – you can try it free for deletions on Discord, Twitter, and Facebook, and Reddit.
