Could you clarify what you mean by „required me to provide my age in the setup assistant“? Was is actually required, or optional? Dont they already have your age associated with your iCloud account, or were you creating a new one? Without more details I’m pretty skeptical there is something nefarious here

It was a required step in the setup assistant.

I was trying to setup this Mac with NO iCloud account thus it could not deduct my age from the account.