This seems like it's mostly about retail situations. I just say no in the situations. It's always surprising how taken aback cashiers and such are when you just refuse to provide your phone number or zip code or whatever else they ask for. I'm pretty non-confrontational, but I have no problem just answering no when asked for unnecessary personal information.
May favorite fake birthday is 1st January 1970.<p>This is a date very familiar to Unix people<p><pre><code> $ TZ=GMT date -d "@0"
Thu 1 Jan 00:00:00 GMT 1970
</code></pre>
and it gives me a smile!
I do this. It causes lots of confusion when my friends get reminded about my birthday by Facebook. It’s reached the point where I have started celebrating my Facebook birthday, in addition to my real birthday.
In general... don't give out information that's not needed... and give out fake information when not needed, but required by stupid webforms.<p>So yeah, I'll give actual information to government, insurance, bank etc, but mostly bullshit (even name, DoB, etc) to (web)shops. Besides the address a shop doesn't need anything from me, so they usually get a throwaway e-mail, no phone-number or 0123456789 and only a postal-address if buying physical goods for delivery.<p>For mail-addresses where I need them later, always just customize them (like with gmail using youraccount+webshopname@gmail.com or with self-hosted using postfix's + or - address seperator).
I'm in a jurisdiction where lying in many cases is legal. I think the principle in general is that lying without bad intent is legal.<p>> [...] Do not lie about your birthday to your doctor. Or your bank. Or when you’re trying to get your driver’s license. You get my point.<p>I don't give my real birthday to my doctor. Because why should I? An approximate birthday is totally fine for medical purposes.<p>Of course I don't lie to banks or the government. I think legislation against money laundering etc. is a good thing and so I accept these requirements.
> Ask why the office or person or company needs that information from you. Or just ignore it until you’re asked for it directly, and then ask them why they need it.<p>I've tried that a few times. I always seem to get back the same non-answers:
"Oh, this is standard procedure", or "Our system doesn't work without this info".
I've yet to receive a non-dismissive or intelligible reply...
Farrell's used to provide free ice cream on "your" "birthday". At some point the US Selective Service purchased their birthday list to harvest new male 18-year olds, and (at least according to urban legend) promptly discovered that many a Seymour Butz or Phillip Michael Hunt who "just turned" 18 had never in fact existed.
Looking at a health software design principles to maximize for privacy, thinking we just ask for age. Anyone know of examples that take these user privacy questions seriously to inverse the typical ad-centric models? Age-based indicators are really helpful for predictive analytics but not at the cost of privacy maximization.
I lie about my birthday whenever I fill out forms for Marketing on the internet - also use a throwaway email address. It keeps them from matching you up on Equifax, Ad targeting etc.
I enjoy using 1 of April as fake DoB. This way I even make an instant joke on social sites, that do make reminders to other about friend's birthdate.
Good strategy. One, which like so many others, I use all the time. The downside? I'm never sure if I'm a twenty-something or an 80 year old ...