What is the current status of age-related fields in systemd?
Asked by
MellowCedar42
I've seen conflicting information about systemd and age-related data. Some reports say an optional date-of-birth field was added to user records, while others claim it was removed after criticism. What is the current state of this feature, and does systemd provide or plan to provide any kind of age verification?
Answers
The field can provide information for software that wants to use it, but that doesn’t make it verification. A desktop environment or application could potentially build a local age-related check around the data, although it would not have independent proof of someone’s identity or date of birth.
Reply to this answer
systemd does not perform age verification, and there was never a systemd-level mechanism that checked someone’s age. The relevant field is an optional birthDate value in user records. It could just as easily be stored in a user’s home directory, so its presence doesn’t itself create an age-verification system. Any actual checking would have to be implemented by another component, such as a desktop environment or application.
Reply to this answer
The optional date-of-birth field is still exposed through systemd’s user-management tools; for example, homectl supports a --birth-date=YYYY-MM-DD option. So it appears the field was not permanently removed. The important distinction is that this stores an asserted date, while systemd itself does not validate it or verify anyone’s age.
Reply to this answer
Add your answer
Answers are reviewed before publication.
MellowCedar42: If it’s only a field, couldn’t a user simply edit it? Someone familiar with Linux could change the value and claim any age they wanted.