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Age checks creep into Linux as systemd gets a DOB field (www.theregister.com)

submitted 11 hours ago by Powderhorn@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org

31 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Just what I want in my distro.

After weeks of debate, code to record user age was finally merged into the Linux world's favorite system management daemon.

Pull request #40954 to the systemd project is titled "userdb: add birthDate field to JSON user records." It's a new function for the existing userdb service, which adds a field to hold the user's date of birth:

Stores the user's birth date for age verification, as required by recent laws in California (AB-1043), Colorado (SB26-051), Brazil (Lei 15.211/2025), etc.

The contents of the field will be protected from modification except by users with root privileges.

The change comes after the recent release of systemd 260 but unless it is reverted for some reason, it will be part of systemd 261. One of the justifications is to facilitate the new parental controls in Flatpak, which are still in the draft stage.

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[–] UnhingedStopa@sopuli.xyz 1 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

They will force you to verify it using your government info somehow after they "notice" it isn't working "as expected".

[–] guynamedzero@piefed.zeromedia.vip 2 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

That’s… not what this is. Who is “they” in this scenario? There’s no government that’s looking at these values. It’s simply a way for any app you’re running to get your DoB without a prompt to track you better.

[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 hours ago

It shouldn't need to reveal DOB to any other party. At most there should be an API that returns a boolean indicating whether the user is a child. DOB is too much information.