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Facebook apologises to the over 100s about birthdate limit

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By John Glenday, Reporter

February 22, 2013 | 1 min read

Facebook has been forced to apologise to an elite band of silver surfers aged 100 or more following complaints that the social media sites birthdate form only stretches back as far as 1910.

It follows the case of Mrs Marguerite Joseph of Detroit who was born on April 19, 1908 and joined the platform at the age of 102.

However a quirk of software means her birth year is automatically changed to 1928 when 1908 is entered, leaving her stuck at a relatively youthful 99.

Gail Marlow, Mrs Joseph’s granddaughter, said: "Every time I tried to change the settings to the right year, Facebook always came back with an unknown error message and would send us right back to a year she wasn’t born in. I would love to see her real age on Facebook, I mean in April she’s going to be 105. It’s special."

A Facebook spokesperson promised to fix the flaw, saying: “We've recently discovered an issue whereby some Facebook users may be unable to enter a birthday before 1910. We are working on a fix for this and we apologize for the inconvenience."

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