Are Birthdays Considered Personally Identifiable Information (PII)?

When it comes to protecting your personal data, it‘s important to understand exactly what qualifies as personally identifiable information, or PII. While some types of PII are obvious, like your name and address, others fall into more of a gray area. For example, is your birthday considered PII?

The short answer is: yes, birthdays are absolutely a type of PII. In fact, birthdays are one of the most commonly collected pieces of personal data, so it‘s critical to understand the privacy and security implications. Let‘s take a closer look at why birthdays qualify as PII and what you need to know to keep yours safe.

What Exactly Is Considered PII?

First, let‘s define PII. According to the U.S. General Services Administration, PII is "information that can be used to distinguish or trace an individual‘s identity, either alone or when combined with other personal or identifying information."

Some clear-cut examples of PII include:

• Full name
• Social Security number
• Driver‘s license number
• Financial account numbers
• Passport number
• Email address
• Phone number
• Home address

However, PII also encompasses other personal details that could be used to identify you when pieced together, even if they don‘t explicitly contain things like your name or ID numbers. This includes data points such as:

• Date and place of birth
• Mother‘s maiden name
• Biometric data like fingerprints
• Medical information
• Employment information
• Digital identifiers like IP addresses

As you can see, your birthday falls squarely under the umbrella of PII. Even though a birth date alone may not be enough to steal your identity, it provides a key data point that can be combined with other information to pinpoint you as an individual.

The Risks of Exposed PII

So why does it matter if your birthday and other PII gets out into the wild? Because it opens the door to identity theft, financial fraud, and other cybercrimes. According to the Insurance Information Institute, there were nearly 1.4 million reports of identity theft received by the FTC in 2021. And the number one type of identity theft? Credit card fraud, which relies heavily on personal information like birthdays to apply for accounts in a victim‘s name.

Image source: Insurance Information Institute

According to the Identity Theft Resource Center‘s latest Data Breach Report, the number of data breaches publicly reported in the U.S. increased by 68% from 2020 to 2021, impacting over 294 million people. And while the majority of those breaches didn‘t involve highly sensitive information like SSNs, they did include PII such as birthdates that could be leveraged for other attacks.

Image source: Identity Theft Resource Center 2021 Data Breach Report

Why Birthdays Are Valuable PII

You may be wondering, what‘s the big deal about a birthday? It‘s just a date, and lots of people likely share the same one. While that‘s true, here‘s why birthdays are considered especially valuable PII:

1. Birthdays are extremely common identifiers asked for by everyone from social media sites to banks to retail stores. Chances are, your birth date is sprinkled across dozens of online profiles and accounts.

2. Your date of birth never changes, so once it‘s out there, it‘s permanent. It‘s not like an email address or phone number that you can easily swap out.

3. Birthdays are often used as a secondary form of authentication or to verify your identity, like when resetting a password. A scammer could leverage your birthday to gain illegitimate access to your accounts.

4. Fraudsters can exploit birth dates for social engineering attacks by wishing you a happy birthday to build false trust or by sending "birthday deals" that are actually phishing scams.

5. Criminals sometimes piece together stolen birthdays, names, and addresses to create fake identities for children and apply for government benefits, credit accounts, etc.

In the hands of savvy cybercriminals, your birthday is a puzzle piece that helps fill in the picture of your identity. Threat actors can use automated bots to test countless combinations of PII across sites in a practice called "credential stuffing." Or they can sell bundles of aggregated data on the Dark Web to other scammers. In fact, the going rate for a person‘s name, SSN, and birthdate on the black market is about $8 per record.

Keeping Your Birthday and PII Secure

Since your birthday qualifies as PII, it‘s smart to control who has access to it and how it‘s being used or stored. Of course, in today‘s digitally-driven world, it‘s nearly impossible to avoid ever sharing your birth date online. But there are steps you can take to minimize your risk:

• Only provide your full birth date when absolutely necessary. If a site or service asks for your birthday but doesn‘t require it, consider leaving it blank or only entering the month and day.

• Familiarize yourself with the privacy policies of the companies and platforms that you share your birthday with. Make sure you‘re comfortable with how they collect, handle, and protect your data.

• Enable two-factor authentication on your important accounts so that a birthday alone isn‘t enough to let a scammer gain entry.

• Regularly monitor your credit report, bank statements, and other accounts for any signs of suspicious activity or identity theft. Consider signing up for an identity monitoring service for added protection.

• If a company you‘ve trusted with your PII experiences a data breach, follow their recommended steps and change relevant passwords immediately. Take advantage of any free identity protection or credit monitoring they offer to impacted customers.

• Use strong, unique passwords for each of your accounts. Better yet, use a secure password manager to generate and store them. Avoiding simple passwords that incorporate personal details like your birthday.

• Think twice before participating in viral social media "challenges" or quizzes that ask for your birth date and other personal info. Scammers love to harvest this data.

• Install antivirus software, keep your operating system and apps updated, and avoid clicking links or downloading attachments from unknown sources. Many PII exposures occur due to malware.

Organizational Responsibilities for Protecting PII

It‘s not just on you as an individual to safeguard your PII — companies and organizations that collect consumer data like birthdays also have a major responsibility to keep that information secure.

There are a number of laws and regulations surrounding PII, including the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), the EU‘s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and HIPAA for medical data. In general, these require that organizations:

• Have a legitimate, clearly communicated reason for collecting PII
• Take appropriate security measures to protect the data they collect
• Grant individuals certain rights regarding the use of their PII
• Notify consumers in the event of a data breach involving their PII

However, complying with these evolving regulations is a major challenge for many companies. According to ISACA‘s Privacy in Practice 2023 survey, only 38% of respondents say their organization is completely compliant with applicable privacy laws, and 23% were unsure of their compliance status.

Common privacy failures listed by respondents included:

• Lack of training or expertise (40%)
• Lack of budget (39%)
• Lack of management support (33%)
• Complicated or unclear legal requirements (32%)

Image source: ISACA Privacy in Practice 2023

If you suspect that a company is mishandling your PII or isn‘t taking proper precautions, you have the right to file a complaint with regulatory bodies like the Federal Trade Commission.

From an organizational perspective, some best practices for protecting PII include:

• Providing comprehensive privacy and security awareness training to employees
• Instituting role-based access controls to limit who can view sensitive data
• Leveraging techniques like data encryption, hashing, and tokenization
• Developing an incident response plan to swiftly identify and mitigate breaches
• Carefully vetting the security of third-party vendors and partners
• Investing in robust monitoring tools to detect suspicious activity
• Staying on top of the ever-changing legal and regulatory landscape

Real-World Examples of PII Incidents

To drive home the importance of safeguarding PII like birthdays, let‘s look at a few real-world examples of what can happen when this info falls into the wrong hands:

• In 2015, a breach at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management exposed the birthdates, SSNs, fingerprints, and other sensitive details of over 20 million federal employees and contractors. This data was a gold mine for foreign adversaries to compile dossiers on U.S. government personnel.

• The Robinhood trading platform recently fell victim to a social engineering scam where a threat actor called customer support and successfully used birthdates and other PII to convince an employee to provide access to internal support systems. The bad actor went on to obtain the email addresses of 5 million customers and the full names of 2 million.

• In 2021, scammers scraped 700 million LinkedIn profiles and posted the data, including names, phone numbers, and physical and email addresses, for sale online. Even though LinkedIn hashed and salted the passwords, many of the other details could still be exploited to craft more convincing phishing messages and identity theft attempts.

• Fraudsters have been caught using birthdates gleaned from social media and other sources to open new credit accounts, make fraudulent purchases, or apply for loans and benefits in victims‘ names. For example, one cybercrime ring stole over $12 million by creating synthetic identities using real SSNs paired with fake names and birthdates.

The Bottom Line on Birthdays as PII

So, are birthdays considered PII? Absolutely. Your date of birth is a valuable identifier that deserves to be protected, just like more obvious PII such as your Social Security number.

In our hyper-connected, data-driven era, it‘s unrealistic to think you can keep your birthday entirely private. But by being selective and cautious about who you share it with and understanding your rights regarding your personal data, you can significantly minimize your chances of falling victim to identity theft or fraud.

Stay vigilant, and happy birthday!