Happy Birthday, Forum SpamBots!

In dea­ling with spam­bots as the admi­nis­tra­tor of a cou­ple phpBB forums, I’ve noti­ced that most of them, when regis­te­ring, give the birth­date of March 28, 1983. I thought there might be some expla­na­tion for this con­sis­tency — like the January 1, 1970 dating of phan­tom phpBB posts — but a Goo­gle search for “march 28 1983″ only turns up threads on various forums men­tio­ning the coin­ci­dence, without offe­ring any explanation.

I did find out that these spam­bots are likely the pro­duct of XRu­mer, a spam­ming tool, so my guess is that March 28, 1983 is the default value of a con­fi­gu­ra­ble birth­date, but I’m not really inte­res­ted in ins­ta­lling it to find out.