Instagram's insatiable thirst for your personal data now comes with a threat: hand it over, or else. Show The Facebook-owned social media platform announced Monday that, going forward, users will be required to submit their birthdays to the company. If they don't feel like complying, then they won't be able to use the service. "We'll show you a notification a handful of times and if you haven't provided us with your birthday by a certain point, you'll need to share it to continue using Instagram," reads the press release. What's more, Instagram says that plans are in the works to catch people inputting fake birthdays. "We recognize some people may give us the wrong birthday, and we're developing new systems to address this," warns the company. "As we shared recently, we're using artificial intelligence to estimate how old people are based on things like 'Happy Birthday' posts."  There's nothing you can hide. Credit: facebook Instagram claims that this latest data grab is in the best interests of its users, and references a March move to make it harder for adults to message users under the age of 18. "This information allows us to create new safety features for young people, and helps ensure we provide the right experiences to the right age group," explains the company. "For example, [with users' birthdays] we can apply recent changes we made to restrict advertiser targeting options for audiences under the age of 18 to more people." However, Instagram is also quick to admit that it benefits from this new policy, too. "[Knowing users' birthdays] also helps us show you more relevant ads." Instagram's help center makes clear that, once given, there's no way to claw your birthday back from the company. "Note that once you add your birthday to your profile, it can't be removed," warns Instagram. Oh, and in case anyone was inclined to find a silver lining in this news — perhaps Instagram's new birthday policy will make it easier to remember friends' birthdays? — Instagram dashes that hope, too. "Also, your birthday won't be shared with other people on Instagram." SEE ALSO: Go download your Instagram history now (then delete your account) So there you have it. One of the world's most data hungry companies just got a little greedier. Time to feed the beast. If you haven’t given Instagram your birthday, it’s about to start asking for it a whole lot more — and it’ll eventually be required for you to use the app. Instagram started requiring that new users add their birthdates in 2019, but if you had an older account, it was possible to skate by without providing that info. Now it seems that’ll become increasingly more difficult. According to the press release, Instagram will ask you for your birthday when you open the app, if you haven't already added it to your profile. You’ll be able to ignore it, but only up to a certain point — eventually, Instagram says, you’ll have to add your birthday if you want to keep using the app. Instagram also says that if it doesn’t have your birthday, it’ll ask for it before showing you posts that are marked as sensitive. It’s been blurring sensitive content for years, but now if you want to see it, your birthday will have to be on file with Instagram. Instagram says this is to help protect kids Instagram will also ask your age before showing you sensitive content. Image: Instagram The company says these efforts are part of its work to make the platform safer for young people. In May, the company formally announced that it’s working on a version of Instagram for people younger than 13 — a feature that would obviously require the platform to know people’s ages. It’s also been working on other age protections, like making it so adults couldn’t DM minors who weren’t following them or by making accounts for people younger than 16 private by default. Instagram’s birthday support page also says it uses it to moderate ads. (For instance, people under 21 won’t get ads for alcohol.) The company says, in the future, it’ll use its age detection AI to sniff out people who are lying about their ages. In July, Facebook had a blog post about this tech, saying it was analyzing comments on your birthday posts, such as “happy 21st” or “happy Quinceañera.” According to its press release, if someone says they’re above a certain age like 13 or 18, but the AI says otherwise, Instagram will have them verify their age using a variety of methods (though it doesn’t say exactly what this will look like). Sometimes companies knowing your personal info can be a surprise Social networks have long asked you for your birthday, but having them required speaks to the growing need to make sure that kids are safe online and the feeling of invasiveness that can come with that. Snapchat users recently got a taste of the strangeness that can come when social networks have information you might not remember handing over: they discovered that the app knew the time and location they were born because they had given the info to Snapchat’s astrological profile feature — and then seemingly forgot that they’d done so. For Instagram users, though, this likely won’t be an issue. It’s going to be hard to miss the birthday information requests. Should I give my real birthday on Instagram?Don't you love being bombarded with “Happy Birthday!” messages on Facebook and other social channels? Love it or not, the fact that others know your birthday increases your risk of identity theft and fraud.
Should you use your real birthday?When someone wants to confirm your identity over the phone, the first question they usually ask is "what is your date of birth". For this reason it's not something you should just leave publicly available on social media. Use a second fake birthday for your accounts like gmail, skype, etc.
Does Instagram tell others its your birthday?Unfortunately, Instagram will not notify others it's your birthday. However, this option is only available on Facebook, and others receive notifications about friends' birthdays.
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Should I put my real birthday on Instagram
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