Twitter on Tuesday warned users about a viral prank that could get you locked out of your account.

If you see someone claiming you can get new Twitter color schemes by changing your birth year to 2007 on the service, don't fall for it. That would mean you were 12 years old, or too young to have a Twitter account.

"Please don't do this," the company said Tuesday in a since-deleted tweet. "You'll get locked out for being under 13 years old."

If you already fell for the prank, you should have received a message from Twitter. Follow the instructions in that message to re-gain access to your account, the company advised.

"We don't have different color schemes based on your birthday," Twitter Support tweeted today.

Based on the responses to that tweet, many users fell for the prank and are now waiting for Twitter to unlock their accounts.

To comply with the US Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA) and EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Twitter requires users to be at least 13 years old.

After GDPR went into effect last year, Twitter locked the accounts of users who may have been younger than 13 when they signed up for the service, even if those users were of age at the time of suspension. As The Guardian explained at the time, some of those users had originally signed up for an account without entering their birthdate, then added it later.

Twitter in June said it was "working on a technical solution" to delete any tweets those users posted before they were 13 years old and reinstate their accounts. On Twitter today, some users said they are still waiting for access to accounts that were locked last year.

"Can I have the account you guys locked 9 months ago back?" one user wrote in response to Twitter's warning about the new birth year hoax. "I made a total of two tweets before I turned 13, it shouldn't take too long to delete them lol."

Resource: https://me.pcmag.com/social-networking/12290/this-twitter-prank-is-locking-people-out-of-their-accounts