Miscellaneous Hacks - Change COPPA Minimum Age

The COPPA of vBulletin is a great way to prevent under aged user's from registering on your forum, but its hard coded to 13 years of age.

With this simple file edit, you can change this number to anything.

For vB 4.x:

In register.php around line 121 replace 13 with whatever age you want (eg. 18)

PHP Code:

if ($vbulletin->GPC['year'] < 1970 OR (mktime(0, 0, 0, $vbulletin->GPC['month'], $vbulletin->GPC['day'], $vbulletin->GPC['year']) <= mktime(0, 0, 0, $current['month'], $current['day'], $current['year'] - 13))) 


For vB 3.8.x:

In register.php at line 174 replace 13 with whatever age you want (eg. 18)

PHP Code:

if ($year < 1970 OR (mktime(0, 0, 0, $month, $day, $year) <= mktime(0, 0, 0, $current['month'], $current['day'], $current['year'] - 13))) 


For this to work, you need to have the COPPA system enabled. In AdminCP options->User Registration, make sure "You should also have "Deny registration for users aged under 13 years" is set and also enable the "COPPA Registration System Cookie Check".

If you want to change the message that is shown to underage users, the phrase varname is "under_thirteen_registration_denied".

mmfgamer5 pointed out that if you want to use the COPPA cookie option to prevent users from registering if they are below the age you set you need to do some additional steps. See the post here

[|Jordan|]

First post reserved.

[sulasno]

if I changed to 18,
do I need to change the year to 1992
if ($vbulletin->GPC['year'] < 1970 OR (mktime(0, 0, 0, $vbulletin-

[|Jordan|]

No, nothing else needs to be touched. I tested it with 18 and it worked.

[belowthebelt]

Thank you for posting this !

[Reeve of shinra]

simple but handy for the many people who need it

[ti07shadow]

Why would you change the age for Coppa? COPPA or Child Online Privacy Protection Act. Is made to protect children's privacy online. This is meant at the predefined age. If anything if something happens and you set the age higher, you can have some issues with the ACT

if your going to change the age, you might as well change the contents.

http://www.coppa.org/coppa.htm

if anything you nulled the agreement for coppa. The agreement is built around "Children" under the age of "13"

im not against the idea of changing your minimum age requirements. However you should at least change the coppa agreement to meat the necessary needs for your age limit.

Quoted from COPPA - Children's Online Privacy Protection Act

"(1) CHILD.—The term "child" means an individual under the age of 13. "


If anything is this a good idea for changing the age limit. but please know that by doing this you null that COPPA agreement. COPPA does not protect users over the age of 13. Therefore you are at risk.

[Leo777]

Originally Posted by ti07shadow

Why would you change the age for Coppa?

I believe for most people making this change, it has nothing to do with COPPA, it's just a quick and convenient way to add a user-configurable age-restriction by altering the built-in COPPA check.

Note that if you use this, you should disable the "COPPA Registration System Cookie Check" in your admin, otherwise it has the opposite effect - the cookie will actually allow the user to register if their age is over 13 but under your age restriction. For example if a person enters their age as 16 then the initial check will stop the registration due to this hack, but then when the person clicks the Register button again it will check the cookie and allow the registration because it sees the age as over 13. A quick fix is to simply disable the Cookie Check option. A better fix would be to also alter the cookie check function to work with your age setting, but I don't have time to investigate that right now - if someone else wants to post a full fix that would be great

[ferdia]

Originally Posted by ti07shadow

Why would you change the age for Coppa? COPPA or Child Online Privacy Protection Act. Is made to protect children's privacy online. This is meant at the predefined age. If anything if something happens and you set the age higher, you can have some issues with the ACT

if your going to change the age, you might as well change the contents.

http://www.coppa.org/coppa.htm

if anything you nulled the agreement for coppa. The agreement is built around "Children" under the age of "13"

im not against the idea of changing your minimum age requirements. However you should at least change the coppa agreement to meat the necessary needs for your age limit.

Quoted from COPPA - Children's Online Privacy Protection Act

"(1) CHILD.?The term "child" means an individual under the age of 13. "


If anything is this a good idea for changing the age limit. but please know that by doing this you null that COPPA agreement. COPPA does not protect users over the age of 13. Therefore you are at risk.

COPPA is an American law. There are a whole host of non-American sites out there. I personally want to use it to insure no one under 18 is allowed on the site without parental permission, and this solves that problem nicely.

[ESPALPSP]

Thanks, it works great