Is lying the solution to a lack of privacy online?

I do wish social networking sites like G+ and FB would stop advertising peoples birthdays. Your birth date is one of those "known facts" used by many organisations (banks, government departments etc.) to verify your identity. Providing this data to social networking sites can result in information leakage and contribute to identity theft and security incidents. Combine this with all the other bits of information they capture and it would be quite easy for someone to bypass those security questions every call centre asks as a facade to security - they only need to gleam a little info from many sources.

This morning G+ asked me if I wanted to say happy birthday to Peter. I know Peter slightly but not well enough to be privy to such information and I have no idea whether it really is his (or your) birthday today, if it is... Happy Birthday! If it's not then congratulations on lying to Google and Facebook - it's good practice (so long as you can remember the lies you tell).

In a world where privacy is becoming impossible, lying may be our saviour. What a topsy-turvy world we're living in...