Reported by The Guardian
Using a fake DOB or leaving the field blank when making an online account can offer protection from identity theft
You get a call from your bank saying there has been suspicious activity on your account. They read out your name, address and date of birth so you are happy it is a legitimate caller.
But you are talking to criminals who have used your date of birth as part of a web of verifying information to convince you they are someone else.
More from the original report
People’s DOBs are often held in online accounts after being entered as part of a sign-up process for a retailer, loyalty scheme, newsletter or online competition. In a recent hack of the online retailer Asos customers’ dates of birth were among the details taken by scammers.
Now cybersecurity professionals have warned people to resist entering a date of birth, or to put in a fake one, to limit the amount of personal data that is online, frustrating criminals’ attempts to “jigsaw” together personal profiles.
Jake Moore, an adviser for the cybersecurity company ESET, says information gathered during hacks can be sold on and used by scammers, either to trick people into trusting them, or to impersonate them.
“A date of birth alone is not particularly valuable to criminals, but combined with other information, such as names and phone numbers, it can help criminals … commit identity fraud,” he says.
Alexandre François, who investigates scams for the intelligence company WhoisXML API, found that eight out of 14 retailers he surveyed recently asked for a date of birth on sign-up. “Retailers may also have little incentive to remove this field, as the full date gives them the customer’s age, which is useful for marketing and targeting,” he says.
You may hear about a hack either in the news, or in an email from an organisation telling you that your data has been compromised. How the scam manifests itself will depend on what happens to the information that has been stolen.
If a retailer is hacked, and the details end up on the dark web, they can be used to…