Incorrect date of birth

[andytheeagle]

Hi,
Either I had an aberration when I first joined or something got lost in translation but you have my DOB as 1st March when it should be 17th Feb.
Please could this be changed?
You can add 1954 for completeness
Thanks,
Andy

[Pleater]

There should be an edit button on your personal details - I could see one on my own, but even the powers of a moderator do not extend to altering the personal details of others.

Anne the Pleater :ootd:

[O'Searcaigh]

Happy un-birthday!

[ctbuchanan]

I would be reluctant to give my actual date of birth for security reasons. Giving away items like that can lead to identity theft. For that reason I never post my real birthday on any open forum. But that is just me.

[English Bloke]

I agree entirely CT. That's also the reason why there are only a few who know me other than John the English Bloke.

Andy: I'd edit your original post if I were you. Just my thoughts.

I think you need to contact Steve directly (by PM I assume) to get your DoB changed. If this quote from the User CP page is anything to go by:

Date of Birth - *******
Your date of birth and age are displayed in several places on the forum. Only the administrator will have access to your date of birth should you choose to hide it via the privacy option below.

Please contact the Administrator if your date of birth has changed.

[Steve Ashton]

To all the members of X Marks.

Please see the notice I am posting at the top of the General Kilt Talk forum later today for full details.

But here is the short story.

We have many, what are called "drop box spammers", just sitting in the members list of this forum. For example in 2009 alone this forum was hit with 1526 spammers who registered only to place a URL link in their profile and hope that someone will click on it.

In an effort to weed out these spammers I have been going through the entire members list one member at a time.

There are a few telltale give aways that a person may be a spammer and needs further research. One of these telltales is an invalid email address. One that is called a throw-away or does not actualyl exist.

Every day our software looks at the listed birthday of every member and sends a birthday greeting to the email we have on file.

If the email is bad I, as the owner, get an error message from the forum. This is how I would find some of the sleeper spammers.

As I am working through the members list manually I began to notice that many of our members have no birthday listed. Hence, no birthday greeting would be sent, and I would get no error message. So I began to enter the date of the first of the next month as a default.

This morning I logged into my email account and found 153 error messages for members with the birthday of 1 March. Some of these are undiscovered spammers. Some are really old members who's email address has changed over the years.
Some of these are members in good standing who for some reason may have changed their email address and forgotten to update their forum profile.

So, sending a birthday greeting will perhaps serve more than one use.

1) I can identify sleeper spammers.
2) Members who have been inactive for a while may be reminded to log in and see what is new.
3) Our current members may get a reminder to update their profile.

Now, some have commented that they never put correct personal information in a forum profile. OK, I don't mind that and with the current fears about identity theft I can understand.

All I ask is that our members keep their forum profile as up to date as they feel comfortable with. If you don't want a birthday entered either put some fictitious date in. Otherwise, as I check off your profile you may find your birthday listed as 1 April 2012.

If your email is correct you will get a birthday greeting on 1 April.
If your email is incorrect I will get an error message and I will probably be sending you a PM just to confirm you still wish to be an active member of this forum.

As we get ready to switch over to the new version 4.0 of the vBulletin software you may see a note under your username such as "Oops, this member's email address is no longer valid". This will be a gentle reminder to everyone to check and update your forum profile.

If you wish to use a bogus email address or birthday you can. If you would either send me a PM to let me know, or respond to mine as I get around to checking you on the members list.

Thank you to everyone for your patience and understanding in this. It is just one way I am fighting the spammers and keeping this forum a pleasant place to visit.

[sydnie7]

"Please contact the Administrator if your date of birth has changed."

I'd love to change my date of birth if I thought it would make some of the wrinkles/grey hair/arthritis/etc. evaporate!

[/threadjack]

Thanks, Steve, for all the attention to detail and care/feeding of this forum.

[ctbuchanan]

Thanks for the explanation. I put down a birth date close to my own with a different year - younger of course. But fairly valid none the less.

[English Bloke]

Yup, that makes sense. It must be a chore though to have to keep doing that just to keep the nasties at bay. You have my thanks and admiration Steve.

I've got my real B'day listed by the way but I've ticked the box to keep it hidden from the open forum.

If anyone would like to send me presents though I could be persuaded to untick it ...

[Steve Ashton]

While I am working with the member list I will have birthdays listed as day and month only.
This is so I can remember where I left off at 2:00am last night.