Viral Twitter birth year prank will get you locked out of your account

Twitter is warning its users not to fall for the latest viral prank circulating on the platform, saying it'll get you locked out of your account.

The hoax, which appears to have begun making the rounds on Monday, promises to make users' feeds more "colourful" if they change the birth year in their profile to 2007. An early tweet on the trick has been retweeted more than 13,000 times, but the only color change associated with this trick is the user's face turning red.

Twitter rules prohibit people under the age of 13 from having an account on the platform. And seeing how this is 2019, if you change your birth year to 2007, that would make you 12. That gets you locked out of your account, Twitter warned Tuesday in a tweet from its support channel.

"We've noticed a prank trying to get people to change their Twitter birthday in their profile to 2007 to unlock new color schemes," Twitter said in its tweet. "Please don't do this. You'll get locked out for being under 13 years old."

The user age issue flared up last year when Twitter began automatically locking down accounts of users who identified themselves as being under the age of 13, in response to the General Data Protection Regulation, a sweeping European Union internet privacy law that went into effect in May.

Users who've lost access to their account can appeal by logging in and following the prompts for inputting an incorrect birthday, a Twitter representative said. They can also fill out this form, and the Twitter team will assist them, the spokesman said.