I took a seminar on preventing identity theft and the presenters talked about personal information I should not give out without a valid reason.  They said the scammers and hackers are after my full name, social security number, driver's license number and birthdate.  With my name, birthdate and a social security or driver's license number, they just stole my identity.  Many sweepstakes are requesting birthdates and if we don't always know if the sweepstakes site is valid or not this may be is dangerous.  And we don't know whether the company that is running the sweepstake has adequate security measures in place to protect our birthdates once we do give them that information.  Maybe we need to alert these sweepstake companies to stop asking for our birthdates. Or maybe they need to stop their contests altogether because if the birthdates are stolen from them, the companies offering these sweepstakes may be contributing to identity theft.

 I've always been kind of leery about filling in my birthdate.  I've thought about lying.   Why can't they just ask for the year? I think that would be somewhat safer.  Maybe there should be some legislation on this matter.

I DO enter my name and birthdate - just NOT my Social Security number or my driver's license. And hackers and scammers are interested in ALL of these. I don't even put my SSN and driver's license number on my Roboform information (or my credit card or bank account, etc.).

Concerning birthdates - why can't they just ask if you are over 18 or 21, whatever the case may be.  There are lots of contests out there that do just that.  Why can't the rest do so, too?