How does Ronald Reagan know it's my birthday? Facebook privacy

Factual Questions
1

I got a targeted ad in my Facebook feed for the Ronald Reagan Presidental Foundation. It showed up one week before my birthday (it says Happy Birthday Week).

My privacy is set so only Friends can see my birthday. How does this advertiser know it’s my birthday week? I don’t follow it, never even heard of it before.

2

I don’t think advertisers respect privacy data.
To be clear, I’m not saying that advertiser specifically disrespected you, just that they may be able to set up an ad that goes to people on their birthday. Of course, that makes it easy for them to see who it was sent out to, or at least who reacted/commented on it.
It’s also possible they bought your data from another website and cross-referenced it with your name (or phone number or email address).

Edit: Looks like they can target people with upcoming birthdays.

3

I’d be more concerned about a dead guy sending me birthday wishes. Just seems kinda creepy.

4

They don’t necessarily need to know it through your Facebook birthday settings. There’s a million cookie-setting websites out there that might have placed cookies in your browser which, in conjunction, let the Ronald Reagan Presidental Foundation know that (i) it’s your birthday next week and (ii) this Facebook account belongs to the person whose birthday is coming up.

The useful thing about web tracking, via cookies or otherwise, is not the information that one particular act of tracking gives you. It’s that you can combine information from many, many different sources and draw conclusions from all of them.

5

Hell is the last place I would expect to have privacy rules.

6

I did a brief contract stint at one of these analytics companies 2-3 years ago. They claimed they could sniff out and infer names and contact information for people in corporate positions who’d have authority to purchase things like software etc. Their secret sauce was a big black box… they were hoping to get bought by Google, of course.

They were OK to work with but I was so creeped out by their mission that I turned down a job offer and couldn’t tell them why. I really needed that job, too.

7

Moderator Note

Let’s keep political jabs out of GQ.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

8

A fake birthday and the landline phone number with a fake ID is what I use, ditto for store loyalty cards.