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Ask HN: Is it legal to ask for personal information without reason?

3 points by frsandstone ↗ HN
While surfing the web of Youtube content creators I ended up on a website that prompts the user for their date of birth in order to continue. No reason, no information about what it will be used for - just preventing the user from continuing without typing in this personal information.

"What year were you born?" [Blank area to type in year] "Enter" Privacy Policy

It seems super spammy but is it legal? It's a little scary that people can be preyed on in this way.

Source: https://www.j-14.com/

4 comments

[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 17.5 ms ] thread
1996
To tell you the answer, I need to know the last 4 of your social
slater
Well I hope they enjoy my age of -1.
pepsi
Seems like a very misguided effort to comply with COPPA since the site content is likely geared toward teens/pre-teens.

I clicked the "enter" button without selecting a year and the URL changed to https://www.j-14.com/?age_gate%5Bbirth_year%5D=&age_gate%5Bc...

I would assume the better way to notify users is the way other sites have an alert bar at the top or bottom with their cookie policy.

icedchai
Seriously? Just enter fake info.