Is It Safe to Use Your Birthday in a Password?

Dates are one of the most common things people put in a password. A birthday, an anniversary or the year a child was born feels personal and private. In practice, dates are easy to find and quick to try.

Your dates are less private than they feel

Birthday posts. Every year, friends post "happy birthday" messages on the day, which tells everyone the date.
Profiles often show a birthday, a graduation year or the year you started a job.
Life events like weddings, new babies and first days at school are shared with the date attached.
Usernames and email addresses often end in a birth year, like sam1994.

There aren't many dates to try

A year has 366 possible days. A hundred years of birthdays is only about 36,600 full dates, a tiny list for a computer to try. Guessers also try every common way of writing a date: 0412, 1204, 12041994, 1994 and 94. Once they know which date matters to you, the guessing is over in seconds.

Someone else's date is no safer

Using a partner's, child's or parent's birthday instead of your own doesn't help much. Those dates are usually shared online too, often by you. Wedding anniversaries are the same.

Name plus year: the classic pattern

The most common shape of a personal password is a name followed by a year, like a pet, partner or team plus a birth year. Anyone guessing will try that pattern early, and a symbol at the end, like !, rarely slows them down. Read why your pet's name isn't a safe password.

What to use instead

Use a password manager to create a long, random password for each account.
For the few passwords you have to remember, use a passphrase of four or more random, unrelated words. Leave out dates and numbers that mean something to you.
Don't change a password by bumping the year, like 2025 to 2026. Anyone who sees the old one can guess the new one.
Turn on two-factor authentication, so a guessed password isn't enough on its own.

Practice spotting it in a game

Guess The Password is a free password guessing game built on habits like this one. Each level gives you a fictional person's profile, chats and posts, and you crack their password from the clues they left. Every person and password in it is made up. There's also the Daily Cipher, a new password to crack every day.

Seeing how quickly a "personal" password falls is the fastest way to stop using one.

Play free in your browser Try today's Daily Cipher