Day and Month of Birth is a basic check to see if you are who you say you are, if you are refusing to give even basic details like that I can see why the medical staff who deal with you would give you confused/annoyed expressions
Same with social security numbers. I’ve lost count of all the sites I’ve had to enter it in over the years, at this point I just assume all of my info is available to a motivated search
To be clear, I don’t refuse to provide my Day and Month of Birth, simply because I don’t want to be some kind of privacy pariah.
That said, while it may have been a reasonable point of ID in the 90s, I don’t believe that remains the case in 2024.
The basic concept of Australian Privacy Legislation is that organisations ought to collect only that information which they require, and they should disclose the reason why they are collecting that data.
If the only reason to collect ones Day and Month of birth is so I can repeat it back and confirm it later then that seems very pointless to me. There are other details which they do require which can be used to confirm my identity.
That said, while it may have been a reasonable point of ID in the 90s, I don’t believe that remains the case in 2024.
It’s useful for quickly disambiguating between multiple people with the same name though - the odds that two people with the same name and date of birth are using the same provider on the same day are low enough to consider it useful.
I’m certain that fewer than 0.1% of patients at a small medical clinic would share the same first and last names. In those cases, you could differentiate by address and age if necessary.
I think you underestimate how common the most common first and last names are. In an even small city you are likely to see repeats of the most common names.
Yes, uniquely identifying the patient is important, especially for pharmacies where people with the same name might receive different doses of the same drug or receive similar sounding drugs that the patient might not catch.
What would you suggest? It needs to be a piece of information that is probably unique when paired with name at least as far as the local area, that absolutely everyone has, that the pharmacy and doctor both have and is unlikely to change (to avoid issues where records in one place are updated before the other).
When I donate blood, they ask me for that info like 3 or 4 times throughout the process. While it probably doesn’t apply to a regular doctors visit, I think it’s also used to gauge if you are alert and your memory is good.
Day and Month of Birth is a basic check to see if you are who you say you are, if you are refusing to give even basic details like that I can see why the medical staff who deal with you would give you confused/annoyed expressions
Well, yea, but we shouldn’t use it for that either.
Google found my day and month of birth in about 3 seconds, and it’s entirely because of this “collect everything” behavior.
Same with social security numbers. I’ve lost count of all the sites I’ve had to enter it in over the years, at this point I just assume all of my info is available to a motivated search
To be clear, I don’t refuse to provide my Day and Month of Birth, simply because I don’t want to be some kind of privacy pariah.
That said, while it may have been a reasonable point of ID in the 90s, I don’t believe that remains the case in 2024.
The basic concept of Australian Privacy Legislation is that organisations ought to collect only that information which they require, and they should disclose the reason why they are collecting that data.
If the only reason to collect ones Day and Month of birth is so I can repeat it back and confirm it later then that seems very pointless to me. There are other details which they do require which can be used to confirm my identity.
Which other identifiers would you feel comfortable confirming? Is there a reason you think DoB is dangerous to share?
DoB is considered sensitive personal information in the Australian Privacy Act.
Other identifiers might be street number or last three digits of phone number.
It’s useful for quickly disambiguating between multiple people with the same name though - the odds that two people with the same name and date of birth are using the same provider on the same day are low enough to consider it useful.
I’m certain that fewer than 0.1% of patients at a small medical clinic would share the same first and last names. In those cases, you could differentiate by address and age if necessary.
I think you underestimate how common the most common first and last names are. In an even small city you are likely to see repeats of the most common names.
Does that really matter?
Differentiate some other way.
Yes, uniquely identifying the patient is important, especially for pharmacies where people with the same name might receive different doses of the same drug or receive similar sounding drugs that the patient might not catch.
What would you suggest? It needs to be a piece of information that is probably unique when paired with name at least as far as the local area, that absolutely everyone has, that the pharmacy and doctor both have and is unlikely to change (to avoid issues where records in one place are updated before the other).
When I donate blood, they ask me for that info like 3 or 4 times throughout the process. While it probably doesn’t apply to a regular doctors visit, I think it’s also used to gauge if you are alert and your memory is good.