@atoponce Being able to store the birthday of the user is useful metadata for the system to have in general. This is something that is needed to have regardless of any regulations. There are already other PII stored. Additionally there isn't any "Verification" mechanism in the PR you linked or proposed at all.

Jesus Christ read before spreading further misinformation. You also clearly haven't read the California legislation you are so worried about.

@alatiera @atoponce

Honest question from a non-programmer (although I did learn BASIC in high school and Pascal in college), how would the age of the user be useful metadata for the operating system? The reason I ask is that I view the OS as serving my interests as a user, and I can't think of a way I would benefit from having my birthdate stored by systemd. Thanks!

@travisejones @alatiera It's likely in place so future software that requires a birthday from the system can retrieve it.

For example, some mature video game with adult elements could ask systemd for the birthday before letting the user play the game.

AFAIK, there are no hooks in place that verify that the supplied birth date matches their birth certificate, government issued ID, etc. So there's nothing stopping you from lying about your age to get around the video game rating.