Ask HN: Has Google figured out you gave them a fake date of birth? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Has Google figured out you gave them a fake date of birth?

Way back when, as a privacy preservation measure, I set up the account with an off-by-one birth date. Today, on attempting to log in to Gmail, I was blocked at a screen claiming

  Your date of birth is missing.  This information is needed to comply with the law.

I figure this happened because Google learned the true date, by other means.

Anyone else seeing this?

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Never give anyone your real DOB without a proven need to know.

The key to using a fake DOB is consistency. Use some simple formula to be able to reproduce your fake DOB on demand. If you can't do this, if you use different DOBs, Google will obviously know your date is fake.

As an example, here is what I do to create a consistent DOB for my fake online persona.

Swap month and day (instead of May 10th, I use Oct. 5th) then reverse the last 2 digits of year. My formula obviously won't work for you if the resulting date is invalid so develop your own. For example, you could subtract X from year, month and day. Or use your mother/wife's month and day with your year. Anything will work as long as you can remember and reproduce it.

My online persona also uses a different spelling variation of my name.

Once again, consistency is the key to not eventually being rejected or banned.

Or simply chose 1st january 1970 as your date of birth

Google is a data driven company. They know based on nothing but sheer statistics that this date is most likely fake.

Why make it easy for them to identify fake data?

ha.. that's what I do too.. Guess it's not unique.

Soooo many people were born on that day ;)

Valve reported in 2013 that 93% of its users were born on January first.

I’m not sure it’s related but I find it amusing

> January 1, 2021 Minus 9 Months Would Be: April 1, 2020

News just in 93% of PC gamers born because of April Fools Joke gone wrong.

Yeah I’m sure that’s it ;-)

Why would you need an algorithm if you are not going to use something like the service name as a seed (so each service gets their own DOB - which might not be necessary)? Just pick a year, and pick a day. Use it.

Just pick a year, and pick a day. Use it.

As I said, "Anything will work as long as you can remember and reproduce it."

I find that I tend to forget purely random dates over time so I prefer a semi-random date based on something I will not forget.

It's just a memory trick, I forget meaningless dates but I don't forget simple privacy algorithms. Your mileage may vary.

as a tech savvy 93/98/109/138 year old man/woman/undisclosed in this security focused world we live in, I have yet to be quizzed by any provider of online services to verify my A/S/L other than that one time your mother was in IRC

What law requires Google/an email company to know your exact DoB?

Supposedly COPPA.

Every UNIX affinado ought to use 1970-01-01 as the DOB (the start of epoch).

What about 1991-09-17? The first public release of Linux would make a good DoB as well, and does not look as deliberately-chosen as 1970-01-01.

Nah. They will see 1970-01-01 and suspect that it's not your real DOB but what if it is? There's nothing they can do about it really.

I got it as well. Can't remember if I ever gave Google any birthdate but, no matter, another fake birthdate works fine.

perhaps give a consistent fake birth date (rather than a random one)

Ive been giving out 1.1.1990 for years now. Makes it easy to remember even after a long time

I have seen that message on one of my Gmail accounts, but it didn't actually block me I think.

If it doesn't actually block you, they are simply checking for consistency. If you do not provide a consistent DOB, they will know you're faking it and may block you later.

What about your name? Have they figured out you gave them a fake name?

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