Born on January 1st 1970

There’s a quiet little ritual I find myself doing whenever I’m asked to enter a date of birth into an online form—especially when I don’t want to give away my real one. No, I don’t go for something obviously fake like “01/01/1900” or use my pet’s birthday. Instead, I go straight for January 1st, 1970. Not because it’s plausible. Not because it’s subtle. But because it’s the start of the Unix timestamp, and somewhere deep down, I hope it confuses their database just a little.

For the uninitiated, January 1st, 1970 at 00:00:00 UTC is “time zero” in Unix-based systems. It’s when time began—for computers at least. Anything that tracks time using Unix timestamps is just counting the seconds since that exact moment. So, by choosing that date, I’m not just entering something arbitrary—I’m entering a kind of digital Easter egg. A little nod to the underpinnings of computing. A cheeky hope that, somewhere on the backend, my birthdate is stored as a literal 0.

There’s also a mischievous satisfaction in knowing that timestamp ‘0’ is a known edge case. Systems that haven’t been well tested against it might throw errors, misinterpret the value, or display something strange. Not that I’m actively trying to break anything—but let’s just say if their age verification system suddenly thinks I’m a baby born at the dawn of computer time, I won’t be disappointed.

So next time you’re faced with a form that just needs your birthday—but doesn’t really need it—why not have a little fun with it? January 1st, 1970 isn’t just a date. It’s a statement. A wink to the digital world. And maybe, just maybe, a tiny rebellion against the relentless march of data collection.