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I had started to build this into the database and site functionality. But it occurred to me, why do I need to know it? It's personally identifying information that isn't required for site functionality and yet is covered by various privacy laws.
I decided that if we had it, it would be optional. But then... when testing and showing that information to people... no-one filled it in.
People only ever filled it in:
- When they were forced to
- Out of habit, betraying their identity
Interestingly, I'll reveal that this was one of the signals I used in vBulletin to detect aliases. People would go to great lengths to use an anonymous VPN, set up new email, choose a random but plausible username, run their language through Google translate (English > Spanish > English... then fix a few things)... and yet they'd out of habit enter their birthday when presented with a form like that.
Whilst that helped me detect aliases, it showed me that it really does betray identity. We'd like to do things right... and if we don't need to store personally identifying information we prefer not to. If we made it optional, very few people would use it.
I can make it optional. But would anyone use it?
- When they were forced to
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Velocio
@dancing james
Birthdays - how can we tell whose birthday it is?
It's one of the little things that can mean quite a lot to the sense of community.