Intro

This website is meant to inform people about fake chain messages on the chat platform Discord. This website was inspired by seeing one of these chain messages and being so frustrated that people believe them. Instead of addressing these messages individually, I decided to create this site to address them all at once. This site primarily focuses on examples from the Discord platform but lots of the points made can apply to other platforms. An example of one of these messages:
Please read this carefully: A fair warning, Look out for a Discord user by the name of "nekoCat" with the tag #[Redacted][1]. He is going around sending friend requests to random Discord users, and those who accept his friend requests will have their accounts DDoSed and their groups exposed with the members inside it becoming a victim as well. Spread the word and send this to as many discord servers as you can. If you see this user, DO NOT accept his friend request and immediately block him. Discord is currently working on it. SEND THIS TO ALL THE SERVERS YOU ARE IN. This is IMPORTANT: Do not accept a friend request from nekoCat#[Redacted][1]. He is a hacker. Tell everyone on your friends list because if somebody on your list adds one of them, they'll be on your list too. They will figure out your personal computer's IP and address, so copy & paste this message where ever you can. He is going around sending friend requests to random discord users, and those who accept his requests will have their accounts and their IP Addresses revealed to him. Spread the word and send this to as many discord servers as you can. If you see this user, DO NOT accept his friend request and immediately block him. Sorry for the ping! Stay safe please

Contents

  1. What is the harm?
  2. IP leaks
  3. Accounts DDoSed
  4. Copied from other locations
  5. From "Discord team"
  6. Other variations

What is the harm?

When talking to someone about these messages, they asked: "What is the harm in posting it? You check your phone for 5 seconds?". It is a good question because there is more to this answer than not wanting to check my phone if I do not have to. All that posting these messages accomplishes is:
  • scaring gullible people
  • frustrating people that know its fake
  • spreading false information
  • (possibly) perpetuating a harassment campaign
  • normalizes chain messages
By normalizing chain messages people are more likely to send them around or believe the message, this can be harmful if there is a malicious link or text.

IP leak

Peer-to-peer (P2P) is when a service goes from user to user for example sending a message to a friend (me -> friend), a non-P2P service routes traffic through a third-party, in the same message scenario (me -> third-party -> friend). By routing all communication though a third-party it masks all participants IP address. Some platforms like Matrix use the P2P protocol and others like Discord do not.
Some of these chain messages claim that by adding the user to your friend list your IP address will be leaked, this claim does hold water on some platforms. Discord does not use P2P this means that by adding a user to your friend list you will not leak any IP address. If these hackers had access to Discord's data, why would they need to add you as a friend? Discord stores their user's IP addresses according to their privacy policy. This does not mean that there is no way for a user to get your IP address for example going to a website exposes your IP to the site owner.

Accounts DDoSed

A distributed denial of service attack (DDos) is a type of attack where an attacker will use hundreds of internet connected devices to flood a target with fake resulting in the target being overloaded and going offline. To execute a DDos attack you need the targets domain name (example.com) or IP address (93.184.216.34) [1] It is possable to DDos a computer but it is imposable to DDos someone's account (discord or any other platform) due to an account on a platform is data stored in fancy spreadsheets.
[1] example.com is a site made to be used as a placeholder and 93.184.216.34 is the sites ip address. All websites host IP address is public information.

Copied from other locations

A few versions of this message say something like This announcement is copied from other servers to spread the word. Idk if it is true but please be careful still. It looks like this statement had been added to validate the claims in the message, but it does not validate the claims in any way since other users could have altered the message. The second part of this statement infuriates me the most because instead of taking the time to research the validity of the statement they send it anyway spreading fake information.

From "Discord team"

A few of these messages are signed by Discord Team no social media platform would encourage their users to spread information by re-sending the message to other users. This is for a few reasons:
  • It is slow
  • The platform could ban the user [1]
  • Can cause panicking do to out of date information
  • Small coverage
  • The message can be altered
  • Dates such as tomorrow or 12:50 am can be misunderstood
  • Can cause inaccurate information due to interpretation
Instead, they would make a post on an official platform such as Discord's Twitter (For the Discord platform) other platforms would post on their own official profiles. Discord states in their article Tips against spam and hacking
Discord will only make announcements through our official channels. We do not distribute information secondhand through users or chain messages.
[1] Discord's terms of service states under the TERMINATION section:
The Company may terminate your Account and your access to the Service (or, at the Company's sole option, applicable portions of the Service) at any time and for any reason. The Company is not required to provide you with any notice or warning prior to any such termination.

Other Variations

[1] Indicates that I have modified the message to protect the privacy of users mentioned