How to Find Someone’s Birthday: Your Full Guide

Brandon Way - August 9, 2024

For many people, their birthday is one of their favorite days of the year. It’s time to look back over what they’ve experienced over the past year and be grateful that they have made another rotation around the sun. Most people prefer to spend their birthday with close friends and family members.

Birthdays are also occasions that help give you an excuse to reach out to someone you may not have had contact with for a while. It’s a great opportunity to show that someone has been on your mind. You may not know or remember the birthday of an acquaintance or more distant relative, but it can feel awkward to ask directly, especially if you haven’t chatted in a while.

Nowadays, it seems like almost all information is available online. This can be helpful when you’re trying to find information like birthdays, but it can also be a little worrying if you’re privacy-conscious.

How to Find Someone’s Birthday

There are several methods to try and find out someone’s birthday. We cover the most effective ones below!

Asking Directly

It may seem too simple, but you can always put aside any awkwardness and reach out. You never know if they’ve been feeling the same as you, looking for an excuse to reconnect again. If you don’t see them in person, but still have an active phone number you can try reaching out via text first.

If you don’t want to ask the person directly, you can contact a mutual acquaintance and ask them. Most of us have a friend or relative who is very organized and keeps significant events written in a planner or on a digital calendar. They are the perfect resource in this kind of situation.

If the person whose birthday you’re interested in is a coworker, or you know some of their coworkers, that’s a possible resource as well. Many workplaces maintain a calendar of staff birthdays so that cards or cake can arrive in the office for everyone’s special day.

Even if you don’t want to ask the person themselves, or can’t, there may be other mutual connections you can contact for this information.

Background Check

It may seem extreme, but if you’re looking up information about someone you’re hiring for a job, for example, you would want to run a background check anyway. A person’s birthdate and birth year will appear on their background check.

A background check will also give information on someone’s criminal history, financial information, and other personal details like current address. Unlike social media, a background check will give an accurate birthday based on public records, not self-reporting.

It’s also private, so if you don’t want someone to know you’re looking up their birthday, they will not receive a notification of your search. This will also allow you to find out if they’ve moved or possibly changed their phone number since you lost touch with them.

Searching Social Media

Social media is the main way that people use today to keep in touch, share life moments, and find people they’ve lost touch with. There’s a reason why Facebook birthday wishes are almost a cliche in the digital era.

Facebook

If you’re friends with someone who has made their birthday visible on Facebook, they can also set a feature in their profile that will actually remind their friends of the event.

Even if they haven’t chosen to use that setting, their birthday may still be in their profile information.

If they don’t use Facebook, it’s a little harder to find birthdays online. Sometimes you may not be aware of the social media accounts your friends or family have, especially if they are less active or using a nickname for the account. There are some ways to find these less obvious accounts too.

Other Social Media

Profiles on accounts like Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn have less information than Facebook accounts. There’s usually not as much available information. However, sometimes you can still get some clues about when someone’s birthday might be.

Most social media sites require people to sign up with a birthday for age verification, but some people choose to make that information private.

Your friend may post something like their zodiac sign in their profile if they like astrology. This can, at least, help you narrow down what time of year they were born. Some people will do detailed birth charts based on their date and time of birth, so you could actually find their exact birthdate if they are hardcore astrology fans.

Many people will post on their birthday, sharing celebrations or remembrances for the year. On sites like LinkedIn, colleagues may also post their well wishes for someone’s birthday on their profile. Scroll back through their previous posts to see if they posted about their birthday last year.

Snapchat

While Snapchat doesn’t feature a personal profile with someone’s birthday, they do like to commemorate someone’s special day. Snapchat is known for showing a birthday cake emoji on someone’s profile when it’s their birthday. If someone adds you as a friend, you can check their account regularly to see when the cake pops up to indicate that it’s their birthday.

Is Your Birthday Searchable Online?

When we use social media as a resource to find out personal information about people in our lives, we may start to wonder about the information available about us. We should all be more cautious about our online presence and aware of our privacy settings.

Search Your Information

Periodically, it’s recommended that you search what information is available about you online. Familiarize yourself with data protection laws so you know what your rights are and what options you have to remove your personal information from the internet.

Many people periodically search their own information through popular search engines. The very privacy-conscious may even run background checks on themselves to see what information others can find.

Request Removal

Google, the most popular search engine, has an option to help people remove information from searches. If your personal information comes up on a Google search, you can fill out a removal request form which will have the company review the information.

You can also contact the website’s host to ask them to remove your private information from their site.

Many companies, like Facebook, collect information about you and your online activity. This is mainly to create targeted ads to better match you with products and services you’ll be interested in. Sometimes you can also make requests to these companies to see what information they have on you and to remove it.

Privacy on Social Media

Many of us have old, unused social media accounts from our high school or college days. We also may have made an account when a new trendy site first started, but no longer use it now. The best thing to do is delete any accounts you are not currently using.

Having no social media is simply not practical for most people. These sites can be a valuable tool for keeping in touch with people we love, but can’t see in person that often. They can also be used for career networking and running small businesses.

Any social media sites you choose to keep should be audited periodically. Make sure you check your privacy settings and read any privacy policy updates, opting out of anything you’re not comfortable with.

Sites like Facebook do allow you to make personal information, such as your birthday, private or visible only to people you add as friends. Sites like Instagram also allow you to make your posts only visible to followers. You will also have to approve anyone who requests to follow you. Be aware that your profile photo and bio will still be publicly visible, though.

Use a Personal Information Manager

A Personal Information Manager (PIM) is a kind of software application that helps you organize your personal information and manage it. These managers help you to keep your schedule and important information in one secure place, rather than using less secure apps that might share your information with other users.

These applications can also help you to keep all contact information and birthdays for your friends and family in one place. This will help ensure you never miss another birthday event without relying on Facebook. If that’s the only reason you still have a Facebook account, PIMs can be the solution that allows you to finally shut down your account.

One Year Older, One Year Wiser

As you can see, there are many options for finding someone’s birthday if you need that information. If you’re concerned about your own birthday and other personal information being searchable online, there are a few things you can do. No matter what, use these resources responsibly to continue getting older and wiser each year.