Having your birthday displayed on your LinkedIn profile is optional. While some people like to share their birthday so their connections can send greetings, others prefer to keep that information private. Luckily, LinkedIn allows you to show or hide your birthday on your profile as you prefer.
Should you show your birthday on LinkedIn?
Here are some pros and cons to consider when deciding whether to display your birthday publicly on LinkedIn:
Pros of showing your birthday:
- Allows connections to send you well-wishes on your special day
- Shows you are open to sharing some personal details
- Can be a conversation starter to strengthen connections
- Provides another demographic data point for recruiters or sales leads
Cons of showing your birthday:
- Some people prefer to keep birthdays private
- Could attract unwanted marketing contacts around your birthday
- Age discrimination is still an issue in some industries
- You may get inundated with numerous birthday messages
Overall, displaying your birthday is a personal choice. Think about your comfort level with sharing that information publicly. If you’re open to birthday messages and using it to build connections, displaying the date may work for you. But if you’re a private person or worry about age bias, keeping it hidden may be better.
How to hide your birthday on LinkedIn
Hiding your birthday on LinkedIn is simple:
- Go to your profile page
- Click “View profile” to edit your profile
- Go to the “Contact info” section
- Delete the date in the Birthday field
- Click “Save” at the bottom of the page
Once you remove your birthday date from the profile, it will no longer be visible to your connections or the public. You can still see and edit it in your account settings, but it will stay hidden on your profile.
What happens when you hide your birthday?
Here’s what you can expect when choosing not to display your birthday:
- The birthday date will not show up on your profile anymore
- You will stop getting LinkedIn notifications about your birthday
- Connections will no longer be prompted to wish you a happy birthday
- Your birthday will still be used internally by LinkedIn to verify identity
- You can still fill out the birthday field in settings for advertising purposes
- The birthday visibility can be changed back at any time
In summary, hiding your birthday simply removes the date from public view. But it remains in LinkedIn’s records for internal use. You remain in control and can share it again down the road if you change your mind.
Other ways to be private about your birthday
In addition to hiding your birthday on your LinkedIn profile, here are some other tips for keeping your birthday private:
Adjust notification settings
Under account settings, turn off notifications about your birthday. This will stop LinkedIn from alerting your connections.
Avoid displaying your age
Don’t mention your age or year you were born anywhere publicly on LinkedIn. This helps avoid indirect references to your birthdate.
Be selective with offline sharing
Even if you hide your birthday online, be selective about who you share your birthday with offline among professional contacts and connections.
Use customizable privacy settings
Utilize LinkedIn’s customized privacy tools to limit birthday visibility. For example, you can show it only to your first-degree connections rather than all LinkedIn members.
Enhance online privacy overall
Settings like two-factor authentication and restricting profile views help boost your overall privacy and security on LinkedIn and other networks.
Pro tips for hiding your birthday
To truly privatize your special day on LinkedIn, keep these additional tips in mind:
- Double check that it’s hidden from your profile after saving changes.
- Remember to delete it if you add it back for any reason later on.
- Consider hiding your age, graduation years, and other dates that could reveal your birthdate.
- Change the privacy settings for your connections list so others can’t calculate your age.
- Politely ask connections not to mention or wish you a happy birthday if they know the date.
Should LinkedIn allow users to fully remove birthdays?
While LinkedIn does let users hide their birthday from public display, the birthdate still remains visible to LinkedIn internally. Some privacy advocates argue LinkedIn should allow users to permanently delete their birthday from company records if desired.
Here are some key considerations around fully removing birthdays from the platform:
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On balance, fully removing birthdays could enhance privacy protections, but also create challenges for LinkedIn’s operations. The company would need to weigh these trade-offs carefully in considering any policy change.
The risks of showing your birthday on LinkedIn
While displaying your birthday on your LinkedIn profile seems innocuous, there are a few risks to consider:
Identity theft
Your birthday is commonly used as part of identity verification questions. Showing it publicly could help an identity thief obtain enough information to impersonate you.
Age discrimination
Unfortunately, age bias still persists. Some employers may unconsciously judge candidates based on their age without realizing it.
Financial fraud
Scammers look for key details like birthdays to try gaining access to your financial accounts or stealing your identity.
Marketing spam
You may get more marketing emails around your birthday if companies know your exact birthdate.
Security questions
Birthdays are common security question answers. Showing yours publicly could help someone hack into your other online accounts.
Of course, the risk of these depends on who views your profile and how they might misuse your birthday. But it’s smart to be aware of the potential dangers.
How showing your birthday can help your LinkedIn presence
Despite the risks, displaying your birthday on LinkedIn could help your personal brand and networking in a few ways:
Opens up conversations
Wishing you a happy birthday gives connections an easy, natural way to reach out and start a dialogue. This builds rapport.
Shows you have “nothing to hide”
Being open with your birthday makes you appear authentic and approachable. It signals you have nothing to hide.
Provides data for recruitment
Your age or generation may be useful info for recruiters and talent acquisition specialists evaluating your fit.
Strengthens relationships
Knowing someone’s birthday makes them feel valued. Having connections remember your special day personalizes the relationship.
Improves marketing segmentation
Your birthdate allows advertisers to serve more relevant, targeted ads based on demographic data.
As you can see, there are pros and cons both to showing and hiding your birthday on your LinkedIn profile. Consider your own preferences, career situation, and privacy concerns to decide what works best for you. Just know you can change the visibility at any time!
Things people wish they knew before showing their birthday on LinkedIn
Sharing your birthday on a professional networking site like LinkedIn is a personal choice. But there some things people often overlook or wish they knew beforehand:
It’s public information
Your birthday will be visible to all LinkedIn members by default, not just your connections. Always double check the visibility settings.
You can’t undo it
Unlike a post or status update, you can’t delete your birthday after sharing it. You can only hide it from your profile.
Scammers may exploit it
Scammers harvest data from social media, including birthdays, to craft targeted phishing emails and financial fraud schemes.
It stays on your profile
Even after hiding your birthday, it remains visible on previous profile versions unless you manually remove it by editing each one.
Connections may forget or miss it
Don’t be disappointed if connections don’t wish you a happy birthday. People forget, overlook notifications, or simply don’t know.
You may get unwanted marketing
Businesses will target birthday messaging to you around your special day as another marketing tactic.
It can attract spammers
Spammers often troll sites looking for birthdate information and may flood your inbox on your birthday.
Being informed on these types of aspects before sharing your birthday can help ensure you don’t have any regrets down the road. You can always remove it later if you change your mind.
How to remove your hidden birthday from LinkedIn
If you choose to show your birthday on LinkedIn but later decide to hide it, the birthdate remains visible to you and LinkedIn behind the scenes. To permanently remove it from LinkedIn’s records:
- Go to your Account settings
- Click “Data privacy”
- Select “Change” under “Your birthday”
- Delete your birthday date
- Check “I want to remove my birthday from LinkedIn”
- Click “Apply”
This will completely delete your birthday from LinkedIn’s databases so it’s no longer associated with your account in any way. However, this is irreversible, so only take this step if you are committed to permanently removing it.
Some key things to keep in mind when deleting your birthday:
- It cannot be recovered once removed
- It will still appear in archived profile versions unless manually edited
- You cannot selectively delete – it’s all or nothing
- Others may still know your birthday offline if you previously shared it
Removing your birthday from LinkedIn is ultimately your choice based on your comfort level. While still giving you control, their current approach of hiding rather than deleting it does help maintain data integrity for internal purposes. But the option to permanently delete it gives users greater privacy.
Does fully deleting your birthday cause issues with LinkedIn?
Permanently removing your birthday date from LinkedIn rather than just hiding it could potentially cause some operational issues for LinkedIn related to:
Identity verification
Birthdays help LinkedIn confirm user identities and prevent fake accounts. Removing them compromises fraud prevention.
Age demographics
Birthdays allow precise age calculations for user segmentation. Deleting them loses valuable targeting data.
Advertising relevance
Age and generation data drives more personalized, relevant advertising. Removing birthdays deteriorates this targeting capability.
Legal obligations
LinkedIn requires birthdays for legal reasons like copyright infringement investigations. Deleting them could impede compliance.
Product features
Some features like reminders or analytics may rely on birthdays behind the scenes. Removing the data could break things.
Data integrity
Mass birthday deletions would create extensive missing data and corrupt relational structures in databases.
That said, LinkedIn could certainly invest in workarounds like alternative identity checks that don’t require birthdays. But there are still open questions around balancing operational needs with personal privacy.
Should you display your birth year instead of full birthday?
Rather than showing your full birthday (month and day), some LinkedIn users opt to only display their birth year. Here are some pros and cons to consider with this approach:
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The year-only option gives a middle ground between showing your full birth date or nothing at all. Recruiters can view your age bracket without the security and privacy risks of an exact birthdate. But some connections may still want the full date for birthday greetings.
Sample messages to connections wishing you happy birthday on LinkedIn
If you show your birthday on your LinkedIn profile, well-meaning connections will often send you messages wishing you a happy birthday through LinkedIn. If you want to respond and thank them, here are some sample reply messages you can use or adapt:
Formal
Thank you so much for the thoughtful birthday wishes! I appreciate you taking the time to reach out.
Friendly
Thanks for making my birthday extra special! Wishing you an amazing day.
Casual
Hey there! Thanks for the bday love, hope you’re doing great.
Humorous
I don’t know about getting older but I sure feel wiser thanks to your birthday wisdom today 🙂 Thanks for the bday cheer!
Grateful
Well wishes from friends and colleagues like you make every birthday better. Thank you sincerely!
Personalizing your reply based on your relationship with the person makes the message more meaningful. But even a short “Thank you!” note lets them know you appreciate them thinking of you.
Best practices for celebrating colleagues’ birthdays on LinkedIn
Use these top tips for acknowledging coworkers’ or connections’ birthdays thoughtfully on LinkedIn:
- Keep messages short, simple, and professional if they are more formal connections.
- Make greetings more personal if you have a close relationship.
- Add a photo if you have one together, but ask permission first.
- Stick to professional boundaries unless you know they welcome casual chat.
- Avoid anything embarrassing or inappropriate for the workplace.
- Wish them well without expecting a reply back.
- If relevant, mention a work achievement to compliment them.
- Connect the greeting to networking by offering to help somehow.
With close contacts, feel free to make it fun and celebrate after hours. But keep workplace birthday wishes sincere yet professional.
Conclusion
Posting your birthday on LinkedIn has its pluses and minuses. Some people like to share it widely for celebrations and networking. Others prefer to keep it private to avoid risks like identity theft or age bias. Ultimately, it’s a personal decision based on your own priorities and comfort level. LinkedIn provides the flexibility to show or hide it at your discretion. But once displayed, a birthday does persist in your profile history internally. So give the visibility choice careful thought, and opt to only share it publicly if you’re fully comfortable doing so. With the right privacy settings and connections, displaying your special day can be rewarding. But don’t feel pressured to reveal anything you’d rather keep confidential.
