Menhir has been posting about this too. I think it is a breach of out TOS and certainly an ill thought out action which many would object to. Why not make it an option for us to choose ?

I agree that this is inappropriate and should only be done as option if wanted.

I'd like to express my agreement with those above in that revealing one's date of birth should be the choice of the person concerned. James Lindow.

IDO NOT WANT MY PRIVATE DATA PUBLICISED TO THIRD PARTIES - I DO NOT WANT MY BIRTHDAY PUT ON THE BLOG SITE PAGE; IT IS A BREACH OF MY PRIVACY.

Blog D.E. is breaching their own Terms of Service, see Section 3. Link to Terms of service (from Life's Lessons)

http://www.blog.co.uk/srv/company/company.php?p=tos

Blog D.E. is passing out our personal data to third parties without permission, data which has been given in trust on the basis that our privacy would be respected as per international and national agreements.

The European Community of which Germany is a core member, has data protection laws defined, Blog D.E. is breaching those laws as well.

We should not be put in a position where we should have to choose to opt in and out of misuse of our private data. Our privacy should be respect per se and the giving of our private and personal information must be treated with honesty, decency and respect. Blog D.E. has failed on all these counts.

Intellectual Property Rights now appear to be an issue here with the wholesale publishing of bloggers' media. If the media has been uploaded onto the site and marked as private, then it should remain private and not published until the blog member has permitted the media to be placed in the public domain.

The birthday calendar was added as a response to wishes of our bloggers. Of course we cannot satisfy the wishes of every individual blogger, so we listen to what the majority wants. In responding to the desires of the majority, it is possible that in so doing we upset a minority.

We would like to remind you that the birthday calendar is strictly a friends-only feature - only the people you choose as friends will see your birthday. And user ages have always been displayed on the 'Users online' box. Of course, you can select a fake birth date if you wish.

Birthday reminders are an integral part of almost all of the major internet communities - mySpace, bebo, etc all have them. We, like the aforementioned communities, feel that it is a useful tool in creating a friendlier community atmosphere.

At the moment the birthday reminders are not optional, however since there are some bloggers who do not like it, the tech team has informed me that it will be optional at some point in the future. However we cannot give a specific timeframe for this.

We apologise for the inconvenience caused.

The birthdays issue could cause a problem, but one thing that has always bothered me is the ability to import your email address book and instantly see if anyone in it has a blog. I know for a fact people have found me.

What actually annoys me even more is that when I tried this feature without really knowing what it was, I found the blog of a colleague, and I think she'd me horrified if she knew.

We should be able to opt out of appearing in this list.

All seems to be a pretty major over-reaction to me, and this is coming from someone who doesn't like celebrating his birthday and hides it as much as possible.

I wish to remain as anon as possible, so if there is a breach of personal privacy....then please remove me from this list.
As for it being a `friends only` feature...not so long ago all my `friends only` posts were made public for all to see.....leaving me with no alternative but to close my blog and re set up!

This is all very upsetting - that there are so many things to get worked up about such a trivial thing. I can't quite believe that this is what bothers some people.

Are there not other things to be angry about?

Is the world so perfect that a person's only concern is this?

Seems a little strange.

Tomorrow's the anniversary of 9/11 - how about thinking of that when you're kicking off about something so ridiculously trivial as this?

It makes me worry for the future of mankind.

It may not matter to some people, in which case the outcome is not of too much importance. But as a blogger, maintaining my anonymity is of utmost importance to me. I do not wish anyone I know to recognise my writing style and use of language, as well as events in my life, and then have it confirmed to them that I am the blogger they suspect when they see my birth date.
Legal action may be a little extreme at the present time, but if this continues or there are further breaches I think they need to be reprimanded.

It may not matter to some people, in which case the outcome is not of too much importance the them individually. But as a blogger, maintaining my anonymity is of utmost importance to me. I do not wish anyone I know to recognise my writing style and use of language, as well as events in my life, and then have it confirmed to them that I am the blogger they suspect when they see my birth date.
Legal action may be a little extreme at the present time, but if this continues or there are further breaches I think they need to be reprimanded.

If people know your age and birthday from using this site then they can work out your date of birth. I would never dream of giving out my date of birth on-line and I do not want blog.co.uk doing it for me! I want to opt out of this feature. I know Rampage says we will have this option in future but it would be helpful to know when, please.

I also disagree with the idea of giving a fake birth date - why should I have to lie?

Ethelred makes a good point, birth-dates are often used as part of logging in procedures and should be kept private to avoid identity theft.

Just adding my agreement with all that's been said.

Peter

Munzly's last is the point I was about to make.

I am not angry but I think it was presumptuous to make a change of this kind without PRIOR consultation.

I don't care who knows how old I am in general but I do not want my actual birthday publicised any more than my mother's maiden name. Both are routes to my bank, insurance and other financial matters. We are frequently told to take care of out personal details because of a growing problem with identity fraud. The web is littered with cheap crims on the lookout for this kind of information: if they can get a date-of-birth linked with an email-address they are up and running.

I also tire of being lectured about what I may regard as matters of concern. I am able to have more than one thought or feeling at a time and, while I recognise world starvation and environmental break-down as the major problems of our day, I believe that my personal liberty of opinion includes the freedom to worry about identity theft, bad train services and all the myriad other 'small' problems that can afflict ordinary, boring, little lives like mine if I so choose, even if they are not fashionably political.

I also wish that this site could be left alone for a while. We have worked with previous changes but, as somebody else remarked, this latest re-working is neither attractive nor user-friendly. Add in the illicit use of private details and I think there is room for complaint.

Still not angry. Pulse 71, BP 126/81.

We've just had a chat about this issue in blog HQ. We're all pretty upset that our intentions to improve blog.co.uk for everyone have resulted in such anger and disappointment from some of our bloggers. As you hopefully are all aware, it was certainly not our intention to upset anyone.

We will change this birthday reminders so that they are optional for all users.

I use the birth dates/ages so I can choose the age group of people I DON'T want to associate with. It helps in that way I suppose.
On the other hand, by viewing someone's blog, you can perceive whether the blogger is someone who might be too young, too old, too boring, too political, (same thing) too controversial or just not your tripe...ooops sorry...type. Then you make the choice whether to add them to your friends list and then you can reveal your actual age, but only if you want to.
But at least give us the choice.

i think someone should return the rattle to the pram

now cast that stone people.....

I wonder if blog implementors would consider help in such cases. Is it open code?

Miaow

Yeah...purrrr, but I'm not ageist, just don't want to have a tête-a-tête with someone who puts any old age down (as suggested by the Admin) only to find out it's a 14 year old schoolgirl. Not my scene, went past the schoolgirl scene as I left school.

What a lot of fuss you've all kicked up!
This thing about birthdays is not something to get your knickers in a twist about, it's harmless, surely.
So what if somebody knows your birthday, it's not important either way. I don't give a shite myself.

Now go on, have a go at me for saying that.