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Comment by kmoser | Hacker News Reader

> 5. Date Operational......: You can use your birth date here.

Yikes, no!

It is not hard to find the average US citizen's birthday if you know their real name. Same things with addresses, can be painfully easy (a few minutes often).

Let's just be honest, it's 2026 and you are advocating for security through obscurity.

why not?

It's a vector for identity theft.

Birthdays are one of the absolute worst kept secrets on the Internet. There are entire sites that blab that information to anyone who asks.

My name, and the very fact that I exist are vectors for identity theft. But that doesn't mean I should keep those facts secret either, or that simply attempting to keep them secret will have any effect whatsoever.

Would you post your name, address, DOB, and SSN here? They're easily discoverable on the Internet anyway, so why would you try to keep them a secret? (This is a rhetorical question. I'm not asking you to post that info, for obvious reasons.)

My name is not even remotely hard to figure out, you should be able to leverage that plus some basic info into my home address via voting records in a matter of minutes. DOB might require some sleuthing, but it's not terrible hard to find for many people (often from socials).

At least in US culture, DOB isn't really considered super secret. (If it is I have an excellent source of secret info called "Wikipedia")

You realize your birth date is public information, right?

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