This sounds super obvious, yet every so often on a Discord server I know about, someone’s account gets hacked and they start posting the Mr. Beast scam images. Or they tell me about a game to download. What sucks the most is all your confidential Discord messages, including your DMs, are now in the hands of someone else, and you’ve effectively lost everything with little to no chance of getting back, because support systems are so bad. So, how do you prevent this from happening?

Most hackings occur because you ran something malicious on your computer that hijacked your session tokens or saved passwords.

So, let’s not have that happen. I’m going to have to emphasize the following: ALWAYS be concious when running anything on your computer that has the potential of executing arbitrary code. This means:

• Running executables (.exe files). This includes fnf mods. ANYTHING that is executable, can do anything.
• Opening a file in a program, where it could execute arbitrary code from the file.
  • This includes Minecraft mods, since they are .jar files, which can execute arbitrarily.
  • If you are installing a modpack, vet every mod.
• Downloading and running npm or pypi packages. Yes, supply chain attacks happen. Be cautious when using packages that aren’t mainstream.

If it’s from someone you don’t know or trust, then don’t run it. Even if it’s from someone you trust, like if they’re sharing you a game, what you can do is to put it in Windows sandbox (search that up). But moral of the story: DON’T RUN PROGRAMS ON YOUR COMPUTER RECKLESSLY!!!!!!!!!!

I don’t think you can be hacked just by clicking a suspicious link unless there is a bug in your web browser. Worst that happens is your IP gets leaked. Just don’t enter your password.

When you’re entering a password on a site, always check its domain. The string before the TLD (e.g. .com) defines the site. e.g.:

• discord.com is owned by Discord. You know this is safe
• discoord.com is not owned by Discord.
• discord-platform.com is not owned by Discord.
• And beware of sites containing unicode characters that look like the latin alphabet.

Also, this is an edge case: you will (hopefully) never have to urgently sign into a bank account and transfer money to someone.