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It was just past 10 p.m. on Sunday when The New York Times sent out the alert: “Ric Ocasek, a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame artist and the lead singer of the Cars, was found dead in his Manhattan apartment,” the notification read. “He was 75.”

He was 75 … right?

The New York Police Department said he was, and some news articles relied on a 1944 birth date. But other sources — including Mr. Ocasek’s New York voter registration information and biographies on Spotify and Pandora — indicated he was five years younger. Without a readily accessible birth certificate, how could The Times be absolutely certain?

In the hours after Mr. Ocasek’s death became public, not many others seemed to be sure, either. The top result of a Google search for Mr. Ocasek’s age says he was 70 — a number that seems to be pulled from the singer’s Wikipedia page, which by Monday morning had been edited dozens of times since his death and, at one point, had included both 1944 and 1949 as potential birth years.