This morning began with a pleasant surprise. I had just arrived at my office when a very dear colleague came in, holding a piece of cake. She started singing “Happy Birthday”.
I am not normally one to turn down a piece of cake, but I do believe in telling the truth. “I’m sorry, but it’s not my birthday,” I said.
“It was yesterday, wasn’t it? I read it somewhere,” she protested. Indeed, she had read it somewhere. She’d seen it on Facebook.
In order to maintain the Facebook account for Spotlight Online, I had had to take over an empty account set up by the previous online editor. I changed the name on it to my own, but kept the birth date that was in there — May 1, 1981 — for a reason.
“That’s Spotlight’s birthday,” I explained. It’s when we think the company was founded. She was very disappointed, but gave me the cake anyway.
The new me
Maybe I should have played along. I have no problem with most people thinking I’m 31. And with a birthday on May 1, I’d always have the day off and millions of people would celebrate alongside me.
I can think of a better reason, though. Your birth date is one of the key pieces of information used to establish your identity. It appears on various forms of ID that you carry around with you, as well as in legal documents such as contracts.
Perusing some of the many tips available about guarding one’s online privacy, I recently found a clever tip I hadn’t seen before: When signing up to a social-networking site, change your birth date by a day or two. Attempts at identity theft will become more difficult, while wishes from well-meaning friends will still arrive more or less on time.
It used to be that only our banks asked us for our most private information as an identity safeguard: What is our mother’s maiden name? Who was our first employer? In what city were we born? and so on. Today, any large company with whom you have an online business relationship has the potential to ask such questions and keep the answers on file.
180 degrees
In certain situations in which you may someday need to prove your identity, you will certainly want to be honest: for anything that could affect your legal status or access to your savings or an inheritance, you should use real information. But if you’re making an occasional purchase online and you’re asked to name your pet, you can afford to be creative.
Isn’t it funny how the Internet has come 180 degrees? In the 1990s, everyone on it was a stranger. You didn’t know if the people in forums were who they said they were — male or female, young or old. Now, with a Facebook plug-in, many sites encourage or even force people to post comments under their real name, with a link to their personal profile. You can have privacy or your opinion, but not both.
Participation in the online world is becoming an either-or thing. If you’re in, you’re in, and if you’re out, you’re out — and as one of my former students proved, it is still possible to live outside the grid. The last time I saw him, we talked about how we were both going to be in the same city at the same time; we planned to meet up a year ago today. I thought nothing of it when he closed his Facebook account. But then his e-mail account expired. I suddenly realized I had no phone number or physical address for him. He has such a common name that no search engine can find him.
We never saw each other again.
By the way, the cake was wonderful — airy, chocolatey, not too sugary. The best way to start the day. Bill Cosby agrees!
