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Comment by seanhunter | Hacker News Reader

Goodness knows you can validly critise discord for any number of reasons but the time taken to log in on an untrusted device isn't really one that resonates with me. I have done this recently and the process took all of 5 seconds.

Here's the process if you have a phone and want to do it fast:

1. Click login on discord on the untrusted device. It shows a qr code next to the credentials box.

2. Log in on phone (which for me is just a faceid check).

3. Scan qr code. Now you're logged in on the untrusted device.

No captcha, no username/password typing on the untrusted device, no second factor even (because your phone is logged in using 2FA so you're using that trust) and definitely no email verification.

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Good to know. I refuse to let a bunch of things touch my phone (Discord doesn't exactly have a stellar privacy record), so have never tried, but for those that don't care so much about privacy, it sounds reasonable.

But hopefully you can at least understand how unnecessarily convoluted Discord makes the process if you don't have or want to use a phone.

So if you choose not to do the thing that is designed to make the process simple then the process is exactly the same as it is for me on just about any other site/system when I log in on an untrusted device. I don't really see it as unnecessarily convoluted, but even if it was, you inflicted that on yourself did you not?

I care a lot about privacy and for me personally, logging in to discord on my own phone in order to log in on seamlessly on an untrusted device seems less bad than logging in to some arbitrary system using my actual creds. The latter combines any threat from discord with threats from password sniffing either while I'm getting creds to the device or on the device itself.

> the process is exactly the same as it is for me on just about any other site/system when I log in on an untrusted device

This is not my experience. Logging into Reddit/Twitter/Hacker News etc is nowhere near that level of convoluted.

> you inflicted that on yourself did you not?

That's like stating that an assault victim is inflicting damage on themselves by choosing not to comply with their assailant. Okay, perhaps not the best analogy, but hopefully you get the point.

But no, I don't want to login at all. However Discord decided that I must, if I want to access info, and Discord imposed this procedure onto me, unless I comply with their (what I consider to be unreasonable) dance.

I don't buy your analogy as being at all equivalent. You literally had two choices, chose the hard option and then complained that it was hard.

I totally understand making a tradeoff if you think that it preserves privacy (which I don't agree with as I explained above) but I don't think it's reasonable to do that and then complain about it.

> but I don't think it's reasonable to do that and then complain about it.

"Entry into this establishment requires an exorbitant 20 minute procedure, or you can bypass that by showing nudie pics of yourself."

Me: why do I have to go through this 20 minute procedure?

You: you don't. I understand that not everyone is comfortable with showing nudie pics, but I don't think it's reasonable to complain about the alternative.

Sorry, hard disagree with you, but I see that you're set on your opinion, and I'm set on mine, so let's just leave it at that.

They chose the option that did not imply sharing too much information with discord. The fact that it's hard is mainly because it's not discord's preferred option. So no, it's a perfectly valid choice to make and discord is being a pita. Setting up time-based 2FA is simple. Setting up network (!! email !!) based 2FA is stupid and cumbersome.

That assumes you have it on your phone.

Has anyone figured out a way to remove the phone number attached to an account?

Does the official instructions not work? https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/4413460214807-...

Never attached a number so can't test myself.

No. Discord defaults to using only a phone number for verification.

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