One of the interesting things about online activity is the inevitable question for the date you were born. Indeed, even offline activities such as obtaining information about your utility bill, bank account or any other phone based inquiries will generally request your birthday. This can be by voice recognition or keypad entry (two digits for the day, two digits for the month and four digits for the year).
Often, when applying for anything over the telephone, there may be a period where an automated machine reads out the terms and conditions of whatever you are applying for. The Government legislated to protect individuals in this regard such that any term or condition that was unfair was removed.
Virtually anything you do online such as purchasing an airline ticket or joining a site (say EBay) requires you to tick a box agreeing to terms and conditions. Does anyone read them?
I have logged onto Facebook to try and find their terms and conditions. This is not an easy task. Even their own search engine does not bring up their terms and conditions as the first hyperlink as one would expect.
Even more interesting is that I have not logged onto Facebook for over a month. I immediately received an email from Facebook stating 'Sorry that you've been having trouble logging into your Facebook account'. This is an odd message considering that I haven't.
When setting up a Facebook account, you are required to enter your date of birth. Indeed it is a term of use that this is up to date at all times. Why it would change I am not sure.
Initially I assumed that the relevance of this was so that when your birthday came around each year, Facebook (which it does), sends out reminders to all of your friends that it is your birthday. Whilst this is a charming aspect of the site, the real reason for the use of your birthday is set out in the terms and conditions.
The term states 'Your birthday allows us to do things like show you age-appropriate content and advertisements'.
Of further interest is 'Other information we receive about you'. This includes:
'When you post things like photos or videos on Facebook, we may receive additional related data (or metadata), such as the time, date and place you took the photo or video'
This is an oxymoron. Metadata is defined to mean 'data about data' or 'descriptive statistical information about the elements of a set of data'. The wording 'data (or metadata)' literally means 'data (or data about data)'.
Even weirder:
'We receive data from the computer, mobile phone or other device you use to access Facebook. This may include your IP address, location, the type of browser you use or the pages you visit.'
Presumably this is only within the limits of the Facebook 'sphere'. The clause then goes on (and I am not sure how the two are connected:
'For example, we may find your GPS location so we can tell if any of your friends are nearby'
I have not yet seen Facebook activate this. Why would they want it?
In any event, your birthday is not so that Facebook can send you a present. It is a data (or metadata) collection mechanism.
Finally, one would think that of more importance for your birthday is so that Facebook can scan and remove minors from the site.
Stephen Wilcox
Australian Lawyer
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