How To Find People By Date Of Birth

Is there a way to find a person with just their birth date? Generally speaking the answer to that question is no – unless they have an incredibly unique name. This is still important information to help verify a person’s identity. 

You may be able to find some potential leads when looking for a person starting with a birthday. In this article, I’ll look at the various options out there to find people starting with this information.

The more additional information you have, the better, but if you have birth records then there are options for tracking down a person’s available information. 

In this article, we break down these methods, how much information you can find based on this information, and what is easy to find via public record search.

Let’s take a deeper look!

Is Date Of Birth Enough To Find Someone? 

Having just a name and a date of birth is very rarely enough information to locate someone. Outside of wishing someone you already know happy birthday on social media, you’re not likely to find too much information without searching further.  

Most people don’t like to reveal the actual year they were born. This is to hide their age, but it’s also good from an online security perspective since birthday information is often the basis of one of the security questions.

They will happily share the month and day but more often than not, never the year they were born.

If you have a name and date of birth the next step is to start at free search sites, social media, and there is a trick that works in some cases depending on how old the person’s email address is.

While the person’s original birth date and name aren’t normally going to be enough to find them by themselves, it can be a good starting point for finding the information you need to get there.

How To Find Someone Using DOB

1. Free People Search Sites Are Worth It

One of the best people search sites that you can use is BeenVerified. They have a very user-friendly website, and they offer a lot of different features like reverse email lookup, criminal records, and social media profiles. 

You must enter the person’s name and state and then hit “search.” Having additional information like the year of birth, birthday, or middle name of a person can help to narrow down the field, especially if you’re looking for a “John Smith” or “Tom Jones” or other fairly common name.

Another great search tool is Intelius. This site offers detailed background checks as well as reverse phone lookups. It also has an extensive database that includes billions of public records worldwide.

If you know the exact date the person was born, then you can include that to help make sure the information you’re receiving is on the right person.

The only downside to this site is that it’s not free – but the cost is worth it if you need more detailed information about someone. There are many other databases online like PeopleFinders, WhitePages.com, or Pipl.com but the ones mentioned above are a great place to start.

2. Social Media Can Be Very Useful & Reliable

Right after Google, the next stop on your online search should be social media like Facebook. Social media can be a handy tool for finding people, as very few people don’t have any online presence on social media.

For example, Facebook is the most popular social networking site, and an estimated 75% of Internet users in the United States have an account.

These platforms generally don’t allow for searching for someone via their date of birth. You first need to find the person you are looking for (with their name) and then cross-verify their DOB to ensure it’s a match.

The main issue is most people who care about privacy have their date of birth locked. See below:

The birthdate is hidden from non-friends, and sometimes the user even chooses to hide this from friends. This can be an issue when looking for someone, but most users also will have their birthday appear on that day.

While it doesn’t give the year (unless they post that information), this can help confirm a profile belongs to someone you’re looking for.

Snapchat displays a birthday cake on a user’s birthday, while other platforms each have their own way of showing a user’s birthday.

Looking at a profile to see when a burst of happy birthday wishes occurred will let you know the date of that person’s birthday and let you compare it to the person you are looking for.

Another option is to check out LinkedIn if you know any information about the person, such as their job history, education level, or anything else that could help narrow down search results.

3. Leverage Public Records

Obituaries

Because obituaries frequently include the person’s full date of birth and death, this is an excellent method of locating people by the day they were born. It’s also possible to look through old newspapers for articles describing births, marriages, and deaths. 

If you want to learn more about your ancestor than just their date of birth, this can be a great way to do so. Occasionally, you might even come across a photograph if you’re lucky. 

You can look for obituaries on genealogy websites such as Ancestry.com or FindMyPast.com to see if there is any information. Genealogy searches are one of the few times where a search for people by date of birth can actually be very effective in getting a lot of information.

The obvious drawback is that this isn’t available for anyone who is still alive.

Birth & Death Registries

Birth & Death Registries (also referred to as vital records) are the main sources of information for birth and death records. These registries keep track of births, deaths, and marriages within their jurisdiction.

If you’re looking for someone’s birth or death certificate, you will most likely need to contact the Birth & Death Registry in the jurisdiction where they were born or died. 

However, some Birth & Death Registries also contain information on people born or died outside their jurisdiction, meaning there’s a chance of finding records for people who were born, died, or married in other states.

County Appraisal Records

Courier companies often have archived delivery information that goes back many years. If the person you’re looking for used to live in a particular area, contacting the local courier company may be your best bet for finding them. 

You can also search online for county appraisal records. These records are typically kept on file for several years, and they can provide you with the individual’s date of birth, as well as their current address. 

In some cases, you may also find their current phone number or email address. However, keep in mind that most of these records are only accessible to the public when tied to the purchase of a property or county-run sale.

4. The Old Email Trick

This only applies to some people, but for many who still use an old email from 15 or 20 years ago or more, many email addresses had a number at the end of them like “[email protected].”

In many cases that number is either the year they were born, or the month and year. So JohnDoe89@gmail would indicate a 1989 birth year, while JohnDoe1089@gmail would indicated a likely October 1989 birthdate.

If the number is three digits, it might be a month/day birthday and not a year.

This isn’t a guarantee, but if you have an old email from an individual, that can help to narrow down a possible birthday for someone you want to find.

FAQs

How do you find someone’s birthday on Google?

It is not straightforward to find a person’s birthday unless they made this information public. For example, if they are a famous individual, it’s often easy to find their birthday.

However, if they are not well-known and unless the shared this information somewhere (say a news article), then it’s practically impossible.

How can you find a person’s birthday?

The easiest way in most cases is looking at their social media. Some still label this information publicly, although many don’t since that is often used as part of online identification.

Given enough time you are likely to find their birthday on Facebook, or well wishes from friends and family on the other social media platforms.

Who can see a person’s birthday on social media?

Every social media has settings that the user can adjust to allow some, all, or no one to see their information like posts or when their birthday is.

The default setting is usually that friends can see information, but even then often the birthday only gives the day of the year – not the actual year the user was born in.

How can I get a copy of someone’s birth certificate?

If this isn’t a family member, it’s going to be very difficult and might not even be legal. These are important documents, so a person’s actual birth certificate or any copy thereof isn’t going to be considered if it’s not for yourself, a close family member, or someone with legal authority to get that information.

What Are Your Chances Of Success Using These Methods? 

With the further strengthening of privacy laws, it’s harder and harder to find people using their date of birth unless they make it public. Even then you often need more than a birthday to help you find someone. 

That’s where the third-party tools come into play as they have a database of information about people.

Tools like BeenVerified are recommended, but if you know the date of birth and name of the person and not anything else, you’re going to have a hard time tracking them down without additional information.