I thought I had already written about my weird birthday issues online, but I have not. So, here it is: Why I Got Carried Away Fabricating My Birthday Online.

In October 2007 I read an article by Chris Penn that explained why it really wasn’t his birthday. The overall explanation was because of the potential identity theft. Here’s an excerpt:

Date of birth is one of the holy trinity of identity fraud. Name, date of birth, and social security number will get you VERY far as an identity thief. Combine it with an address, and you’ve got just about everything you need. It’s also a highly-prized piece of marketing data. Read more…

I never really thought about it before. My birth date was scattered all over the internet.

Since reading that article I’ve changed my birth date on websites that require it. Most of the time I use October 7th when in fact my birthday is toward the end of October. On sites I don’t really care about I also use 1977 as the birth year.
NB: As of today — September 12th, 2009 — I am 22 years old; you do the math.

Then, there’s Facebook.

I discovered that changing my birth date on Facebook to the 7th of July (yes, I like the number 7) I had a lot of my Facebook “friends” (I don’t friend just anyone; I have met many of my friends on Facebook, though I wouldn’t expect half of them to know my real birth date) wishing me happy birthday on that day.

I wondered if people believed it was my birthday in July, then they might believe it was my birthday on the 7th of August too. They did. I rolled my eyes and changed it to September 7. Again, more birthday wishes. Several of the same people that wished it in the previous month.

I was curious how long this could last. I changed my birthday on Facebook every month. Sometimes I’d skip a month or two. Sure enough, every time I’d get a lot of repeat messages from people. Some people I haven’t spoken to on Facebook. Ever. Some I hadn’t spoken with in real life since primary school. I wondered why they would message me.

I didn’t have to wonder long because there’s those birthday notifications front and centre on everyone’s Facebook home page. That is, until Facebook redesigned the whole look and feel of the site sometime in early 2008. Now, I have to scroll down to see birthday notifications (perhaps this is a layout option that can be altered).

I rarely scroll down. It’s not that I don’t care. I do. I love birthdays. I’m very excited when I get invited to a birthday party that involves cake, minimal alcohol, and party bags. Those kinds of birthdays are a rarity now [that I'm older than 7] though.

Regardless of the Facebook design change, I continued getting birthday wishes every month. In fact, they increased. On a single day in 2009 I received over 45 posts on my wall wishing me a happy birthday. Six months before my actual birthday. I actually started feeling ashamed when good friends of mine fell for it. There is about 10 people which have caught on. My sister says “C’mon Derek, you’re silly.”

Due to all this “fun”. I began taking Facebook less seriously. I’m “engaged” to a friend of mine when I actually have a girlfriend in real life. It’s well-known online that I have a girlfriend; Rachel.

I would watch Rachel using Facebook and noticed that she would accept friend requests from fans (some she has never engaged a conversation with) and when it was their birthday send them a generic “Happy Birthday!” on Facebook. I’m not judging how people use social networks. In a way it’s very good for brands to stay on peoples’ ‘radars’. Generic messages is just not the way I prefer to network.

Also, I realise that celebrities can’t get away from revealing their true birth date to the public, but I’m sure they have extra measures in place to protect against identity theft.

About an hour ago I received a @reply message on Twitter from Caitlin. A ‘happy birthday’ message. I got all excited because Caitlin is a giddy person and I love getting unexpected messages from friends. I also smacked my forehead and felt really bad because September 11 is not my birthday.

Moreover, I’ve decided to finish my Facebook birth date experiment (for now), and stick with the 7th of October. I thank all of you for participating, especially the ones that caught on early.

My actual birth date is

The answer of that is the number of the date in October. Also, make sure you round to zero decimal points.

Let me know when your birthday is and I’ll send you a present and/or make you a birthday video.

Short URL: http://djsteen.com/wp/p/366

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