Don’t you love being bombarded with “Happy Birthday!” messages on Facebook and other social channels?
Love it or not, the fact that others know your birthday increases your risk of identity theft and fraud.
Let’s learn more about why you shouldn’t share your birth date online. And why knowing how to hide your birthday on Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media sites can safeguard you against potential fraudsters and online threats.
The Threat
Scammers, fraudsters, and identity thieves can wreak havoc with just your name, date of birth (DOB), and address. What could they do?
- Try to scam or defraud you or your family or friends.
- Commit fraud in your name.
- Get access to your financial accounts.
- Open new financial accounts in your name.
- Open utility accounts (including phone and Internet service) in your name.
- Get medical treatment on your health insurance.
- Get your tax refund.
- Get a driver’s license or ID with your name.
- Use your name if they’re arrested.
- Redirect your mail to themselves.
Your name is probably very easy to find; you’re probably sharing it in many online profiles. You probably aren’t consciously sharing your address anywhere, out of concern for your personal safety. But you may not have realized that your birth date can be misused.
Birthdays are widely shared on most social media sites, but it’s a single piece of information that you can easily protect from the public if you know how to hide them.
Identity thieves love to lurk on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and will notice congratulatory messages sent by friends and family to note your birthday. Unfortunately, an ID fraudster can use your birthday as a piece of the puzzle to capture your identity and commit identity theft.
Credit bureau Experian
Fraudsters need just three key bits of information to steal your identity and access your accounts, take out loans, credit cards, mobile phones in your name. All it takes is a name, date of birth, and address – and most of this can be found on social media profiles, such as Facebook. And if your settings are not private, this is available for anyone to see.
The Telegraph
Isn’t Date of Birth Public Information?
People sometimes say, “Who cares about protecting your date of birth? Your birth date is public information anyway.“
In the US, birth dates are often part of an individual’s public record held by the government. It may be present on birth certificates or other documents in the public record. However, this doesn’t mean that the date of birth is freely available to anyone who can google for it.
The date of birth in a person’s public record can be found by going through the government or a private company. Though it’s sometimes free, often you need to verify your identity, pay a fee, and/or create an account to access the information. So, again, it’s not a matter of simply googling a person’s name.
Even though someone could get your birth date this way, it doesn’t mean your birth date isn’t worth protecting. It’s still worthwhile to make it harder, not easier, for someone to get your birth date online.
Don’t Share Your Birth Date Online To Increase Your Security And Privacy
The best way to increase your privacy is to hide your full birth date (month, day, and year).
If you can’t live without the birthday wishes from friends, family, and connections you don’t even know, then at least hide the year of your birth date. People will still be able to see the month and day, so they’ll still know when your birthday is. Or, you could set your birthday to a day that’s a few days before or after your real birthday. You’ll still get birthday wishes, but won’t be revealing your true birthday.
Another option is to change your birthdate and set a false birthday. I should point out that this is against the terms of service of some websites, such as Facebook, which require that you provide accurate information about yourself.
Don’t post your age on or around your birthday (“Well, I’m now over the hill, but I don’t feel any different!” or “Last day in my 20s!”). It doesn’t take much brainpower for someone to figure out your birth year from that, even if you haven’t entered it explicitly.
Don’t reveal your birth date in photos. Imagine that you post photos of your birthday party, and in the photos are cards, or balloons, or a cake that says “30,” “40,” “50,” or whatever your age is. If those photos contain the date they were taken, someone can easily figure out your birth date.
If other people reveal your age in their posts or comments, delete them if you can. If you can’t, contact the person and politely ask them to delete their post or comment because you’re concerned about identity theft.
Let’s look at how to change or hide your birth date on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google, and Instagram. To find instructions for other sites, google change birthday [websitename] (for example, change birthday Facebook).
How To Hide Birthday On Facebook
- From your News Feed, click your name in the top left.
- Click About next to your name on your profile and select Contact and Basic Info in the left menu.
- Scroll down and hover over Birth Date or Birth Year, and then click Edit to the right of the info you’d like to change.
- Use the dropdown menus to change your birthday and use the audience selector to choose who can see it.
- Click Save Changes.
You can change who can see your birthday by adjusting the audience on your account’s privacy settings. There are 2 audience selectors next to your birthday: one for the day and month and one for the year. Friends won’t get a notification about your upcoming birthday if you don’t share the day and month with them.
If birthday greetings on your Facebook profile from friends and relatives you don’t see or talk to anymore are somewhat important to you, then you can put your birth month and day for them to see, but please do not specify the year and only show them to your Facebook friends. You should also refrain from adding people who just send you a Facebook friend request out of nowhere, these are people who don’t share any mutual connections with you or are a complete stranger to you.
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How To Hide Birthday On Twitter
You can customize your Twitter profile by adding your birth date. You can control who on Twitter can see your basic info, specifically your birth date, on your profile by using your birth date visibility settings. You can do this on a web browser or the Twitter app for mobile devices.
- Sign in to Twitter.com or open your iOS or Android app.
- Go to your profile and click or tap the Edit profile button.
- Click or tap the Birth date section.
- Select or change your birth Day, Month, and Year. Please note that your birth date lets Twitter know that you’re old enough to use our services and that the birth date entered must be of the person operating the account.
- You can also review and change your birth date visibility settings. You will see two visibility settings, one to control visibility for your birth date year and the other to control visibility for your birth date month and day. Click a visibility icon (web) or adjust Who sees this (iOS or Android app) to change your settings. Learn more about your profile visibility settings.
- Click Save changes (web) or tap Done and then Save (iOS or Android app).
How do I remove my birth date from my profile?
Like Facebook, you also have the option to hide your birthday on Twitter. You can remove your birth date from your profile by following the below steps:
- Sign in to Twitter.com or open your iOS or Android app.
- Go to your profile and click or tap the Edit Profile button.
- Click the Birth date section.
- Change the values you selected in each of the birth date dropdown menus back to the default values (e.g., Day, Month, and Year) (web) or tap Remove birth date (iOS or Android app). To remove your birth date from your profile on the web, you will need to remove your information from all three of the birth date fields.
- Click Save changes (web) or tap Done and then Save (iOS or Android app).
You can also change who can see your tweets and videos to improve your account’s privacy.
How To Hide Birthday On LinkedIn
- Click the Me icon at top of your LinkedIn homepage.
- Click View profile.
- Click See contact info in your introduction card.
- In the Contact info pop-up window, click the Edit icon.
- In the Edit contact info pop-up window, fill out the Birthday fields.
- Click Birthday visible to and select one of the following options:
- Only you – Visible to you
- Your connections – Visible to members directly connected to you
- Your network – Visible to LinkedIn members connected up to three degrees away from you
- All LinkedIn members – Visible to all LinkedIn members
- Click Save.
Alternatively, you can simply set the fields to Month and Day to remove your birthday from your profile’s basic info.
How To Hide Birthday In Google Account
- Open your Google Account. You might need to sign in.
- Under “Personal info & privacy,” select Your personal info.
- Select the information you want to change.
- Follow the steps on the screen.
How To Hide Birthday On Instagram
Instagram doesn’t ask you to enter your birthday, so you’ll only need to worry if you’ve put it in your Bio. If you have, remove it.
- Go to your profile.
- Tap Edit Profile.
- Type in your information and tap Done (iPhone and Android), or Submit (computer and mobile browser).
Hide Birthday On Skype
- Open your Skype profile.
- Under Personal information, find the Birthday field.
- Set the fields to Day, Month, Year rather than the actual day, month, and year. Click Save.
- Refresh the page. If your birthday is shown again (as it was for me), set a false birthday.
Important: Don’t Post Your Kids’ Birth Dates Online
You now know why, and how, to protect your birth date online. But don’t stop there. You should also protect your kids from the same threats by keeping their birth dates off the Internet. Follow the advice in this post for them. Be especially careful about photos, and posts by others.
If you’re reading this, I assume you’re interested in online privacy. In that case, I recommend you use ProtonVPN to protect your Internet traffic when you’re on public Wi-Fi (when you’re at coffee shops, airports, etc.).
Further Reading
- 3 types of info you should never have on your social accounts (norton.com)
- Fraudsters need just three details to steal your identity – and most of it can be found on Facebook (telegraph.co.uk)
- What fraudsters hope you’ll post online about your identity (bbc.co.uk)
- Is your birthday on Facebook? Here’s why that’s a bad idea (clark.com)
What You Should Do
- If possible, hide your full birth date (month, day, and year). At a minimum, hide the year on all your social media accounts from Facebook to Twitter and Linkedin.
- Consider providing false information for your birth date (month, day, and/or year). Check if this is against the terms of service for the site you’re using.
- Don’t post anything that would allow someone to figure out your age or birth year.
- If other people reveal your age in their posts or comments, delete them or ask the person to delete them.
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I want to change my birthday because it’s wrong it’s [removed by Chad Warner] not [removed by Chad Warner] please put me in that area Google
Richard, you can find instructions for setting your birth date in my Google Account Security & Privacy Guide. As I explained in the post above, I highly recommend making your birth date private rather then public, because if people can easily find your birth date, it increases your risk of identity theft, fraud, scams, and more.
I just want to change my Facebook account a date of birth it’s wrong I don’t know how it got like that
Richard, you can find instructions for setting your birth date in my Facebook Security & Privacy Guide. As I explained in the post above, I highly recommend making your birth date private rather then public, because if people can easily find your birth date, it increases your risk of identity theft, fraud, scams, and more.
I looked up “fake birthdays to use on social media” because I thought there was a date everyone used to not post that info but this just says y not to
There are probably fake birth dates that people commonly use (such as birth dates of famous people). It’s best to not enter a birth date, or if you must, to enter a fake one. If you must enter your true birth date, make it private (at least make the year private).
hi there,
I have just discovered that in a Google Search my name comes up with my year of birth. I have googled others I know and this information is not there. I have gone into my personal google accounts already as you already advise and made my date of birth private (including putting in a fake year!) I also have not got my birth year on any of my social media accounts and am in general very careful of this for identity theft. However This did not resolve the problem- I still come up in a google search along with my other websites.
I have filled out a Verification form now with Google which I am awaiting a response for, and also sent a complaint via the Google FAQ page about EU Privacy Removal filled out a removal request form. I am gobsmacked that I do not have any control over this, and this does not seem to be standard with everyone. Can you advise of someone that can look into this for me please? For the sake of further privacy I am not putting in my website or real name on this comment form, but you may contact via the email address for further info.
You’re telling me that credit bureaus stated someone only needs 3 pieces of information, my name, bday & address (all public record) to open a credit card, loan, and many other fraudulent accounts in my name? How is that when I can’t even open any of those things with just those 3 pieces of information? I am ALWAYS asked my social security number, if not in whole, at the very least the last 4 digits & almost always, I asked my drivers license number & expiration date, along with state licensed in. How can hackers do more than me, with less information about me lol?