Facebook Bug Made Michigan Woman, 104, Lie About Age
We all know someone who's lied about how old they are, especially on the Internet. But a 104-year-old woman in Michigan didn't want to lie about her age on Facebook - except that a bug on the website forced her for a while.
While Marguerite Joseph, is legally blind and hard of hearing, her granddaughter has been maintaining her profile for her and helping her to write posts and respond to messages.
"All of our family members always asked how grandma was doing on my Facebook page," Gail Marlow, her granddaughter, told WDIV in Detroit. "So I decided I would set up a page of her own so she could stay connected to her family in Canada."
Joseph was 102 years old when she first registered for Facebook, but Marlow said she could never get her grandmother's profile page to show an age older than 99. No matter how many times they attempted to update her birth year to 1908, the website would show an "unknown error" had occurred and default to 1928.
"We've recently discovered an issue whereby some Facebook users may be unable to enter a birthday before 1910," Facebook said in a statement provided to ABC News. "We are working on a fix for this and we apologize for the inconvenience."
When reached for additional comment, a spokesperson for Facebook told ABC News that Joseph's profile age has since been corrected. Messages left by ABC News for Joseph's family were not immediately returned.
The spokesperson for Facebook was also asked about a story ABC News reported last year about Maria "Mary" Colunia Segura-Metzgar's claim as the " Oldest Facebook User" in the world. The software problem that Joseph's family encountered may affect other centenarians, but we were able to confirm that Segura-Metzgar, who lives in New Mexico, now has a corrected profile to show she is 105, just a bit older than Marguerite Joseph.