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

submitted 1 day ago by Powderhorn@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org

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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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[–] ascend@lemmy.radio 0 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

It should be something like date of birth and at what age are they no longer considered a minor, then its hashed and the system will only say if they are to be considered a minor or not but not give any information on the actual dates set or anything. Or like a specific number of years to countdown from instead of a date

[–] ParlimentOfDoom@piefed.zip 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Or just let the parents turn it on or off instead of needing it to securely hold PII... Which we know never ends well. Doubtful they'll be using the same device for their entire childhood anyway.

[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

DOB shouldn't be collected at all. Operating systems don't need to know personal information about their users.

[–] ascend@lemmy.radio 6 points 1 day ago

Yeah I guess if someone wanted to set a sort of parental control you'd just make them a user with limited control which we have already ways to do