Instagram's insatiable thirst for your personal data continues: it wants to know when your birthday is.
The Facebook-owned social networking platform announced on Monday that, in the future, users will have to submit their birthdays to the company. If they do not wish to comply, then they will not be able to use the service.
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"We'll show you a notification sometimes, and if you haven't given us your birthday by a certain point, you'll need to share the date with the platform to continue using Instagram," the press release states.
Additionally, Instagram says plans are underway to catch people who enter fake birthdays.
“We recognize that some people may give us the wrong birthday, and we’re developing new systems to address this,” the company warns. “As we recently shared with you, we use artificial intelligence to estimate how old someone is based on things like “Happy Birthday” posts.”.
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Instagram claims this latest data collection is in the best interest of its users and points to a March update to make it harder for adults to message users under 18.
“This information allows us to build new safety features for young people and helps ensure we’re delivering the right experiences to the right age group,” the company explains. “For example, [with users’ birthdays] we can apply the recent changes we made to limit advertisers’ targeting options for under-18 content to more people.”
However, Instagram immediately admits that it benefits from this new policy.
“[Knowing users’ birthdays] also helps us show you more relevant ads.”
Instagram's help center makes it clear that once this information is provided, there is no way to "take it back.".
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"Please note that once you add your birthday to your profile, it cannot be removed," Instagram warns.
“Also, your birthday will not be visible to other Instagram users.”
So there you have it. One of the world's most data-hungry companies just got a little greedier.
Information source: mashable.com
