That’s an important question when it comes to giving out your personal information online.

And, based on a report coming from researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, you may be revealing a lot more than expected – simply by posting your date of birth.
According to the research, social security numbers (for those who haven’t lived Stateside: 9 digit individual identifiers originally used by the government for tax purposes, which became increasingly used in the private sector for authentication) can be predicted fairly easily by using publically available information. The overall concern: this could give rise to identity theft on a “mass scale”.

To learn more about this, the study and FAQs on the findings are available here.

And keep in mind, it doesn’t hurt to be on the safe side and rethink the amount of information available about yourself online – whether it’s on your Facebook profile, a resume that you’ve posted online, or any other types of online profile pages; when in doubt, be stingy with giving out your personal info.