this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2026
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I ran into something like this the other day. I know one of my relatives’ birthday is in February but didn’t know which day and he won’t tell me because he doesn’t want me to send him a card (even though he always sends us cards on special days).
I googled his first and last name, the state he’s from, and “birthday”. The first “result” was one of those AI generated results that gave me his first and last name plus middle initial, the city and state he lives in, and even what political party he is affiliated with, plus his birthday. I was just hoping to get a quick link to a White Pages site to figure out which one was his and then get his birthday, but this fucking thing doxed the hell out of him without me even asking.
He has no social media and spends his time just watching YouTube as his only form of web browsing. How they have all this information on him is beyond me or why they’d allow their bot to dox people so easily like this.
He uses YouTube, likely signed in. That means he has a Google account. That means Google likely has his information. Any service he's signed with Google with has his information. So one of those companies sold his information. Could even be his phone provider.
I don’t think he has an account there either. He needs help doing anything on his phone.
If he's watching on his phone then he probably does. Android phones have a way of making you use an account when setting up the phone or using the app store and it would prompt him to sign in when he first loaded the app up. With a popup that all he had to do was click sign in on.