Question regarding site profiles

[Iwanthelp]

I notice sometimes the age listed on peoples' profiles changes, why is that? I don't mean "oh they got older" but dramatic increases or decreases in age, like over a decades' worth. What's going on there?

[Heather]

I haven't observed this happening here.

[Iwanthelp]

Huh, okay. I can't give examples without getting into 'look at <specific username>' in a public post territory so I'll leave it as a mystery thing.

[Heather]

I don't see any reason you couldn't do that -- you certainly could post them here.

But I also don't understand what your concern is about it, and what we could possibly know about someone's changing anything in their own profile.

[Iwanthelp]

Suppose. And dunno, I guess I've had not-good experience in people making up facets of their identity online so it sets off a "why would they do that, what's going on" feeling of unease for me.

The two examples I recall are...I don't recall the first username but there was a thread that got hidden/removed soon after I saw it where the person claimed to of did...things whilst watching telletubbies, I think their age was set to late 20s initially and I recall rechecking the profile (compulsively click around a lot of shit when bored) being scaled down to teenage years.

The second I remember the name, dalisabeths' profile saying they're 28 now but one of their posts says they're 14.

[Heather]

Okay.

Here's the thing: by all means, sometimes people here aren't honest, be that about their age, their gender, or even what experiences they are posting about. Just like it does anywhere online or offline, it happens that people aren't honest here. We certainly don't like it any more than anyone else, but it does happen now and again, and there's little we can do to prevent that. Do know, however, that when we have discovered a user engaged in any kind of intentional fraud -- like knowingly lying about their age -- those accounts get banned, as we make clear will happen in our registration guidelines.

Users should not be able to change their birthdates once they register: that's a part of the profile people can't change in UBB. And sometimes people just put in the wrong date by accident when registering, but because that's not changeable, they can't change it. Other times people are simply being dishonest.