• FauxLiving@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Why the heck would we ever want a DoB field in systemd, optional or otherwise?

    Who cares? What does having a Date of Birth field do that would harm you?

    Sure, it sounds super scary that some evil corporation would be able to use the data in the birthdate field to locate you. It would be even more scary if they had your realName and location. If your realName and location was stored in your user account then the evil corporation, who has access to modern data brokers, would also be able to determine your birthdate and all kinds of other information about you.

    We don’t have to wait to see how this hypothetical dangerous situation would play out, because realName and location have been user fields since the 1960s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gecos_field