You Don’t Owe Anyone Your Birth Year

Especially not online.

You think you’re just filling out a form. Signing up for points. Answering a prompt on a dating app. But that little year you keep handing over? It’s a lookup key.

Drop it next to your name or ZIP code and suddenly, you’re searchable. Birth year ties into everything from graduation records to credit reports. It’s how people narrow you down. It’s how they find the rest.

You don’t owe that to strangers. You don’t owe that to algorithms.

Your age isn’t a secret. But it should be a choice.

That Instagram birthday post? That email with the class reunion year? Every little clue helps build a version of you you didn’t mean to publish. Most people don’t realize they’re feeding the machine. They just want to be seen, or celebrated, or swipe-righted.

But when you know what that data does?

You learn to keep some of it close.

So here’s what you do

Don’t use your birth year in usernames.

Don’t post your age in public captions. Let them guess.

Don’t fill in birthday fields that don’t actually require it.

Don’t answer security questions honestly unless you have to.

Don’t give your real birth year to anyone who hasn’t earned that kind of access.

Instead, build yourself an alias age. One that fits. One that flows. One that’s just not quite yours. Close enough to pass. Consistent enough to stick. Interesting enough to throw the trail.

Most systems aren’t verifying. They’re just collecting. So give them something safe to collect. Let the people who matter know the real you. Everyone else? They can work a little harder. 💋

Clean It Up: The Birth Year Extraction Checklist

Start with the obvious:

▢ Scrub your birth year from social media bios, posts, photo captions, and “about” sections.

▢ Search old usernames and email handles. If your year’s in there, it’s time for an update.

▢ Pull any public resumes, portfolios, or blogs where you casually dropped your age or graduation year.

▢ Find old birthday posts. Delete or make them private.

Move to where data gets sold:

▢ Opt out of Whitepages, Spokeo, PeopleFinder, and other data brokers. Use a service if you need help.

▢ Check if your birth year shows up in cached Google results. Request removal if needed.

Lock down your habits going forward:

▢ Stop posting anything with dates tied to your age.

▢ Rotate between 1–2 alias birth years that align with your persona.

▢ Use those same alias details in non-legal forms—dating apps, customer accounts, surveys, email signups.

▢ Rewrite your security questions with false but memorable answers.

You’re making it harder for anyone who’s not you to piece together your details.
If your birth year is already out there, the next best move is to bury it under noise.