7 ms·
Lie About Your Birthday
- sjducb 3y agoI do this. It causes lots of confusion when my friends get reminded about my birthday by Facebook. It’s reached the point where I have started celebrating my Facebook birthday, in addition to my real birthday.
- tekla 3y agoJust turn it off
- BrandoElFollito 3y agoI helped my mother with her FB account and someday started to change her birthday every 3 months or so. She started getting "happy birthday!" every three months, usually from the same people. She was initially mad at me (I told her it was my brother who was doing it :)) but then realized that it helped her to identify the senile ones :)
- pseudolus 3y agoAlways use a memorable standard date. Can't go wrong with January 1 and then a year that's multiple of twenty-five such 1950, 1975, 2000.
- Suppafly 3y agoThis seems like it's mostly about retail situations. I just say no in the situations. It's always surprising how taken aback cashiers and such are when you just refuse to provide your phone number or zip code or whatever else they ask for. I'm pretty non-confrontational, but I have no problem just answering no when asked for unnecessary personal information.
- nobody9999 3y ago>This seems like it's mostly about retail situations. I just say no in the situations. I just say it's "against my religion." That usually works pretty well.
- inanutshellus 3y agoWebsites are the problem. You can't say "no thanks" to a required form field. (The obvious retort of "well don't shop there" is a no-go.) I've given "none-of-your-business" data to companies that don't need it for a long time, (e.g. my middle name, shockingly, is your domain name, so weird!) but it CAN bite you if you forget your password and they ask for your birthday as proof of who you are. I get asked my birthday so seldomly that I always forget what my new forever birthday is going to be by the next time I need it.
- Suppafly 3y agoDoesn't work for birthday, but for random none of your business fields, I often use data about the site itself. Give them their own address and use abuse@theirdomain.com for the email.
- vineyardmike 3y agoFor birthdays, I always just pick the nearest static holiday. So eg if you’re born July 9th, I’d just put July 4th for everything. Then when it’s time for recall, it’s as simple as “does this need a real birthday or a marketing birthday” and pick July 4th or 9th.
- rubinlinux 3y ago
- tromp 3y agoWhen I have to enter my birthdate online, and don't see any need to, I always pick the earliest available date, usually Jan 1, 1901, in protest.
- nickcw 3y agoMay favorite fake birthday is 1st January 1970. This is a date very familiar to Unix people $ TZ=GMT date -d "@0" Thu 1 Jan 00:00:00 GMT 1970 and it gives me a smile!
- night-rider 3y agoA lot of hackers do this. One thing I noticed: I get a flood of e-mail on 1st Jan with special offers and companies pretending to 'care' it's your birthday when it's all automated drivel.
- beretguy 3y agoHey! We have the same favorite fake birthday date!
- BrandoElFollito 3y agoSo many people born this day turned out becoming developers, sysadmins, ....
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoCute article. But secrecy is not security, to quote the old saw. This isn't a very powerful 'password'.
- lkbm 3y agoIt's more secure than not keeping it semi-secret. If you're waiting for a 100% perfect security solution to be universally supported by every company, I've got bad news for you. SSNs are also terrible security checks and should not be used in that way, but so long as they are, I'll refrain from putting mine in my email signature.
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoAgain, never mind '100% perfect security'. This was not any kind of security at all. Thus, the old saying.
- robg 3y agoLooking at a health software design principles to maximize for privacy, thinking we just ask for age. Anyone know of examples that take these user privacy questions seriously to inverse the typical ad-centric models? Age-based indicators are really helpful for predictive analytics but not at the cost of privacy maximization.
- ok123456 3y agoI always have added a day and a year to any non-official/non-banking accounts. There's no reason Facebook needs it.
- dylan604 3y agoNo, there's a very valid reason it is needed from Facebook's point of view. There's just no reason for you to allow them to do it.
- photonbucket 3y agoSome dental plans use the social security number as your ID number which is irksome
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tromp 3y ago> Ask why the office or person or company needs that information from you. Or just ignore it until you’re asked for it directly, and then ask them why they need it. I've tried that a few times. I always seem to get back the same non-answers: "Oh, this is standard procedure", or "Our system doesn't work without this info". I've yet to receive a non-dismissive or intelligible reply...
- samsk 3y agoI enjoy using 1 of April as fake DoB. This way I even make an instant joke on social sites, that do make reminders to other about friend's birthdate.
- dylan604 3y agoTry February 30th. If they don't even catch it, it's fun to see the level of validation on their software's end to see if it is allowed to be used.
- Suppafly 3y agoI almost used Feb 30th by accident filling out a form online today changing a field from last month to this months, the software didn't stop me but I caught it myself.
- tiahura 3y ago7/4/1976
- dylan604 3y agoWhat's the significance of 7 April 1976?
- ProllyInfamous 3y agoStatistically, its significance is that it isn't anybody's actual birthday.
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y agoMy cousin's 12th birthday, but OP probably meant the USA Bicentennial.
- saghm 3y agoNot sure if you're joking or not, but it seems like they might be saying July 4, 1976 in reference to the US Bicentennial? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bicentennial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bicentennial
- dylan604 3y agoof course i'm joking to point out that a date written as provided is a bit ambiguous when the locale is not defined. for those that read the written date 7 April 1976, the 4 July 1976 is not a significant date
- BrandoElFollito 3y agoA bit???? xkcd to the rescue! https://xkcd.com/1179/ https://xkcd.com/1179/
- sigio 3y agoIn general... don't give out information that's not needed... and give out fake information when not needed, but required by stupid webforms. So yeah, I'll give actual information to government, insurance, bank etc, but mostly bullshit (even name, DoB, etc) to (web)shops. Besides the address a shop doesn't need anything from me, so they usually get a throwaway e-mail, no phone-number or 0123456789 and only a postal-address if buying physical goods for delivery. For mail-addresses where I need them later, always just customize them (like with gmail using youraccount+webshopname@gmail.com or with self-hosted using postfix's + or - address seperator).
- 48864w6ui 3y agoIt's poor advice: anyone who has your name and address either also has (or is only clicks away from having) your dob.
- buro9 3y agowho says they have my legal name? my address can be written correctly in about 10 permutations (only the postcode truly matters) my email addresses are unique per retailer and end in one of several tlds my birthday actually does look the same most places, 1970-01-01 , I'm 54 according to most shops, and receive discounts at the beginning of each year.
- mo_42 3y agoI'm in a jurisdiction where lying in many cases is legal. I think the principle in general is that lying without bad intent is legal. > [...] Do not lie about your birthday to your doctor. Or your bank. Or when you’re trying to get your driver’s license. You get my point. I don't give my real birthday to my doctor. Because why should I? An approximate birthday is totally fine for medical purposes. Of course I don't lie to banks or the government. I think legislation against money laundering etc. is a good thing and so I accept these requirements.
- vineyardmike 3y ago> I don't give my real birthday to my doctor. Because why should I? You do what works for you, but medical care is one of those situations where I want things to have as little unintended friction as possible. There can be a ton of small edge cases balancing insurance and medicine and pharmacies and god knows what that I don’t want to introduce issues into. In the extreme case, I wouldnt want to end up in the ER from an ambulance and the hospital to miss some important note in my chart (eg drug allergy) because the license on my body doesn’t match the birthday on my same-named file.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- strangattractor 3y agoI lie about my birthday whenever I fill out forms for Marketing on the internet - also use a throwaway email address. It keeps them from matching you up on Equifax, Ad targeting etc.
- billybuckwheat 3y agoGood strategy. One, which like so many others, I use all the time. The downside? I'm never sure if I'm a twenty-something or an 80 year old ...
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y agoShow of hands: how many of us were born at midnight UTC, January 1, 1970?
- jhot 3y agoThis is the way. The more who join, the less of an outlier we become.
- geor9e 3y agoJanuary 1 1970 has been my birthday since I was a 10 year old in 1995, so it never really crossed my mind that some people put their real birthday.
- 082349872349872 3y agoFarrell's used to provide free ice cream on "your" "birthday". At some point the US Selective Service purchased their birthday list to harvest new male 18-year olds, and (at least according to urban legend) promptly discovered that many a Seymour Butz or Phillip Michael Hunt who "just turned" 18 had never in fact existed.