Of course, you might feel excited when bombarded with the Happy Birthday messages on social media, most notably Facebook. Either you are happy with those wishes or not, knowing the fact that others are aware of your birthday makes you prone to risk, fraud, and identity theft. For this reason, you shouldn’t publicize your birthdate to people on social media.
Social Media Threat
Fraudsters and scammers can cause serious damage by ordinarily knowing your name, address, date of birth, and address. Now we are going to move on to what precisely this person can do
- They can perpetrate fraud using your identity
- Get your tax refund
- Make use of your name when arrested
- Open an account using your name
- Make an effort in scamming you, or your family member
- They can receive medical treatment making use of your health insurance
- Obtain a driver’s license using or identity card using your name
- Redirect your mail to themselves
Getting your name on social media is something very easy because it’s something you make use of on most of your online profiles. Although you may not share your address online to ensure personal safety, then it may not occur to you that perpetrators can misuse your birthdate.
A report that was released states the people that steal identity love to sneak on social media sites such as Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. That moment when they notice any congratulatory message from your friends and relatives on your birthday. The unfortunate thing is that these perpetrators can capitalize on this, capture and take your identity to commit a serious offense.
All that is needed by Fraudsters are just three few information to get your identity and gain access to your account, obtain loans, credit cards, and have mobile phones using identity. Only your name, date of birth, and address are needed, and all this can be found on your profiles on social media, Facebook to be precise. If you didn’t set it to private, just everybody could get to see it.
It should not be considered as the date of public birth information
Most times, people care less about their date of birth, assuming that birthdate is a piece of information that should be made public. You can get to see the date of the birth of a person in a public record by merely going through the private and government company. Although checking the date of birth is free, but then you will have to go through some process for verification of identity, you may be asked to make a payment or creation of an account to gain access to the particular information. For this reason, it is not just about searching for the name of a person
Even though your birthdate can be gotten in this particular way, it is not an indication that you should not make a conscious effort in protecting your birthdate
Ways to Increase Your Privacy and Security
One of the best ways to increase your security is to ensure the fact that you make your full birth date hidden. It means you should hide the month, day, and year. People that love to receive the birthday wishes from friends, families, and ordinary acquaintances should ensure they hide the year. By hiding only the year, people will still be able to know the date and month such that they will be able to wish you on your day. Another thing you can do is to set your birthday to a few days before or after your original date, with this you will still get your wishes
Another thing that you can do is just to set a false birthdate, and it is essential to say that this is against the terms and conditions of the site. Some sites such as Facebook will require you to supply the precise and accurate information about yourself
Do not post your age
It is not good to do this particular kind of thing. Write-ups like “Last days in my 20s”, this makes it look so easy for perpetrators to figure out what exactly your birth year, even though you didn’t explicitly state it
Do not reveal your birth date in photos
Just assume the fact that you posted a photo of your birthday, and in those photos, all you can see are balloons, cards, and cakes that indicate 30, 40 and 50, or anything figure representing your age. If anybody notices your age, it will be straightforward to figure out your year
Situations whereby friends, relatives, and well-wishers reveal this in your comments and posts, make sure you delete them if you can. For politeness’ sake, you can contact them and let them know you are concerned about the theft of identity
What to Do
- If you have the chance to hide your full birthdate, hide it, be it the month, day, and year. If that’s not possible, just at least try hiding the year
- You can as well make use of false information, particularly about your birthdate, ensure you make a proper check if it’s not against the terms and condition of the site you are making use of
- Friends and relatives that post what can indicate your age should be deleted
- You should not post anything that can indicate your year of birth
Lastly, ensure you are very conscious about your information and details you put online to prevent you from the danger of perpetrators. Also, for maximum online protection, you should make use of a VPN service provider such as RitaVPN.
With RitaVPN’s efficient VPN service, you are assured of complete online anonymity which prevents your online identity from being tracked, accessed or even utilized by social media identity thieves.
