How often do you pay attention to privacy laws that prevent underage users to join social media accounts? Most of the time, the messages that warn users of not registering with a service if they are under 13 years of age are ignored, whether it’s on Facebook or Twitter. However, those who have done that in the past might be in trouble. If you had registered with Twitter before you hit 13, then your account might be banned.
After the new privacy laws had been set up under the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR a few days ago, Twitter has taken up the new rules seriously and is banning users who registered with the service when they were under 13 years of age. The microblogging service will go through date-of-births for all accounts and will ban those that are found to be registered when the user was less than 13 years of age. “In order to create a Twitter account, you must be at least 13 years old. You don’t meet these age requirements” — this is the message that several affected users are greeted with.
Twitter has always required users to comply with age restrictions while registering with them for making an account. However, mentioning the date-of-birth while registering with Twitter hasn’t been a necessity, with users given the option to put in their information later. The new privacy laws introduced by the GDPR requires parental consent for using online services under the age of 13.
While this is certainly a step towards the right direction in ensuring data privacy, Twitter should also keep in mind the accounts of prominent entities who might be disseminating important information and news, despite falling out of the criteria. If you had created your Twitter account when you were under 13, it’ advisable to create a backup of all your content and migrate to a new one.
(With inputs form Motherboard)
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