Discord is currently investigating a website that is reportedly scraping servers and selling its information to netizens.
In its latest report, 404Media has found a website that is reportedly scraping Discord servers for all of its contents — including messages and voice activity — and subsequently selling access to that data.
404 spoke with the creator of the website, who says that it scrapes more than 10,000 Discord servers at the time of writing, and is using the data for AI model training or to assist law enforcement.
The website, spy.pet, requires a minimum of $5 to purchase to access the information. When asked about how many paying accounts they currently have, the creator told 404 that they have around 100 currently active.
“I like scraping, archiving, and challenging myself,” the creator told 404Media during their conversation. “Discord is basically the holy grail of scraping, since Discord is trying absolutely anything to combat scraping.”
While I didn’t go as far as paying to access these messages, a quick look into the website nearly immediately provided information about various server’s emojis, stickers, and user count.
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Discord provided a comment to 404Media, stating that they were actively investigating the website and its practices, but could not provide more information as it is an active investigation.
“Discord is committed to protecting the privacy and data of our users. We are currently investigating this matter. If we determine that violations of our Terms of Service and Community Guidelines have occurred, we will take appropriate steps to enforce our policies. We cannot provide further comments as this is an ongoing investigation,” they said.
While writing this article, spy.pet’s website began having issues loading — giving a 520 Error instead. It’s unknown if this is merely due to an influx of users trying to access the site, or if Discord has intervened further.
I’ve reached out to Discord for comment, but they had nothing more to share outside of the statement provided to 404Media.
