To enter or not your birthday online |
(1 votes, average: 4 out of 5)
Loading ...Last night at dinner a humorous age-related thing happened.
We went to pay for dinner at the buffet and a woman who I’d guess was in her late 20s to early 30s asked me if I was over 50 to apply a discount. Being I’m not even 40 or perhaps because she found it funny, my wife snickered. In case you haven’t seen one of my many different pictures or Hmmcast videos shared at this blog, I have a lot of gray hair for my age. Don’t use grecian formula. I started graying in my early 20s and figured by the time I was 40 I’d be all gray.
My response to the cashier with a smile: “If you want to give me the 50+ discount, go right ahead.”
This morning I noticed a birthday notice in Skype from one of my friends online. After sending out a happy birthday to my friend via Skype chat, I started wondering how many others fill out the birth date field in profiles when it is optional. For the sites where the birth date field is required, do you lie about your birth year?
Hiding from your age or promoting it?
Some people seem terrified of anybody else knowing how old they are. Vanity is a fascinating thing. When it comes to age, it’s no secret to me. I don’t care who knows how old I am. Maybe when I’m actually over 50 I’ll feel differently, but first I have to get to 40.
I don’t go so far to advertise or actively promote my age like some folks do, but I do fill out the birthdate field honestly whenever I encounter them. My birthday is later this month in case you are curious. I just peeked back through the archives to see what I’ve said about my birthday on the blog, if anything. The only post I found here about my birthday on my birthday was made in September 2003 (post #299) when I wrote about not receiving a speeding ticket and thinking because of the day, the officer gave me a break. Later at the casino I hit a jackpot on a penny machine.
Do you fill out the birthday field online?
Now it’s your turn below or via trackback from your own blog and you score extra points for being honest. Do you fill out the birth date field in your public profiles online when it’s optional? No, not anybody else’s business? Yes, like me, it doesn’t bother you?
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I think that the birthday is too sensitive a piece of information to freely give out online. I don’t think it has as much to do with vanity as it does wanting to protect one’s identity. It’s easy to give up a lot of information on the net without realizing it and with the search engine tools being as good as they are now, it’s not all that hard to figure out for someone who is motivated enough. I’m sure that I have a greater risk of losing my identity in a vendor leak or some kind of a hack attack, but it’s still probably not a good idea to use birthday’s and SS#’s online. If you really want freak people out. out try putting in some names into the birthday database and then start calling your friends to tell them that they are older than you thought they were.
http://www.birthdatabase.com/
Comment by Davis Freeberg — September 10, 2007 @ 7:40 am PST
Interesting response Davis. I’m curious how can knowing someone’s birthdate become a security concern? I don’t place birthdate in the same category — or even close — to a social security number. And it’s possible to put in the birthday without putting in the correct birth year and muddy the web waters. And then there are profile places that just use “age” which becomes outdated fast.
Let’s just use you, Davis. You aren’t even using your legal name (nor am I), so what harm does having your birthdate in a profile on the web present to you, seriously? If your picture is online (not sure if it is), that’s going to lead to people identifying you more than your birthdate.
In our state you can get part of a driver’s license number by knowing a person’s last name and birthdate, but there is one digit in the license number you can’t get — a random pick digit assigned by the DMV. So assuming a hacker knew my legal last name, first initial and middle initial (not too difficult to find) and they could much more easily figure out my birthdate, they would still be stymied by the random pick digit.
Comment by TDavid — September 10, 2007 @ 8:28 am PST
I don’t think I’d classify a birthdate alone as a security concern, but it is one of the important pieces that you’d need in order to jack someone’s identity. Using myself as an example, you’re right that I’m publishing under a pen name, but I know better than to believe I’m anonymous. It doesn’t take much to get my real identity (or yours - insert ominous music). Without my social security number, it probably doesn’t do you much good, but lets assume that someone started with my SS# and had no other information.
With that info alone, it’d be hard to set up fake accounts, but with my birthday, they could log onto AnnualCreditReport.com and pull up my entire credit history. From there, they’d be able to figure out my previous addresses, (including the city that I was born in, i.e weak password check by the banks) which would give them enough to set up and verify bogus credit accounts in my name (but at a fake address.) They could also use the info on my credit report in order to see who I may have previously worked for and then do a little social hacking by calling them and pretending to be a new employer or concerned landlord that wants to verify my work history and wages.
From there, they’d have just about everything they need to start calling my banks and requesting that they change the addresses on my credit and brokerage accounts. Now I’m pretty good at checking these sorts of things pretty regularly, but lets say that I wasn’t paranoid about these things and made some random blog post about my intentions to spend a month on vacation for my birthday. On the surface, it’d seem harmless enough, but if someone had nefarious intentions, they could take advantage of this window by raiding my credit while I’m off working on my tan.
By making it harder to get at my birthdate, it doesn’t prevent the threat, but it does make it all that much harder for someone to connect all of the pieces together. At some point, they’ll figure out a more secure system than using SS# and DOB’s to verify people, but until they do, it’s probably a good idea to protect this information. Remember, just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean that they are not after you.
Comment by Davis Freeberg — September 10, 2007 @ 9:40 am PST
It’s important not to be too carefree with information online, I’m with you there, but I’m still not sold that sharing a birth date online is going to increase the likelihood of identity theft significantly. You left some good examples, so I’ll concede there is some risk.
The most recent incident of identity theft I’ve personally experienced came from making a purchase at a local retailer where they used a third party check cashing service and a rogue employee sold the customer bank account data (FBI investigation is pending). Our bank was notified and recommended we switch our account which we did promptly. A hassle, definitely, but not the result of me sharing my birth date online. The reality is shopping offline with anything other than cash remains a high risk activity for identity theft.
“Remember, just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean that they are not after you.”
I think in my case you meant not paranoid. Paranoid no, educated and informed, yes.
Not sure about your financial accounts online, Davis, but changing an address with mine would require a bank guarantee signature. Hackers aren’t going to go that far and if they do, any money lost I’m going to be insured against that kind of fraud. As for checking investment accounts for changes? I’d be notified of changes at my registered email address, another security feature that hackers can’t do anything about.
Heck, just accessing my PayPal account requires a PayPal security key which I carry around with me. The hacker would need to get my keys from me which are less than a foot away from me at almost all times.
Bottom line: there are much easier targets out there than me and probably you, since you are good about keeping up with things, Davis. Whether or not we share our birth date, isn’t going to make the bullseye bigger. It didn’t make a difference with the store breach I mentioned above.
My house could burn down tomorrow because of leaving our computers turned on and plugged in. Do I panic and unplug everything every time I leave the house? Nope, we have good insurance and I keep a pretty good updated inventory. There’s risk in everything in life.
Again, I do see a small amount of risk to sharing your true birth date online, but from a privacy standpoint my pictures and video are far more revealing.
Comment by TDavid — September 10, 2007 @ 10:08 am PST
I hate the fact that I have to scroll down the list of years when filling in the online forms.
Comment by MacBros — September 10, 2007 @ 4:07 pm PST
I avoid entering my full birth date for the same reasons Davis gave. In itself it isn’t much, but it’s getting easier to piece together a lot of information about a person from the web. I also don’t post my mother’s maiden name, the names of my children, or our physical address. Maybe it takes away some of the friendliness of the web, but I like to err on the side of caution when it comes to identity theft or stalkers.
Comment by Sterling Camden — September 10, 2007 @ 5:01 pm PST
I meant in my case I am paranoid
My examples are extreme, but I always figure it’s better safe then sorry. I don’t think putting your birthday online is the end of the world, but it’s one thing that I’m hoping to keep private. As is, dates of birth are mostly public information anyway. Putting photos and videos online certainly reveals a lot more, but it’s a different type of information that you give up.
What makes your question so interesting, is I can’t help but wonder how many people would just give up the information, if you had made a game out of it instead of just asking? There is some statistical mind game where it only takes a few people in a room before two of them have the same birthday. If you had written a post trying to test that out and someone had put down my birthday, I can’t help but wonder if my response would have been different.
Comment by Davis Freeberg — September 10, 2007 @ 6:09 pm PST
@MacBros: Amen! Especially now that I have to scroll so far.
Comment by Sterling Camden — September 11, 2007 @ 9:01 am PST
[…] can probably guess which year by the picture above. Although a few folks disagreed with me about sharing birth dates online, it was nice receiving some automated happy birthday messages yesterday, as well as some direct […]
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