# Redact dates of birth

> Redact dates of birth in numeric, ISO, and written month formats from text and tabular data.

Canonical: https://bitbanger.in/entities/date-of-birth
Last updated: 2026-10-27

Category: Identity and government IDs · Entity type: `identity.date_of_birth`

Dates are everywhere in business data, and only some of them identify a person. Redactly uses a model gate so an invoice date is not redacted as a birth date.

## How Redactly detects dates of birth

- Reported when the model flags a date in a personal context, or when a date follows a cue such as DOB or date of birth; the regex then expands the fragment to the full date.
- Covers numeric, ISO, dotted, slashed, and written-month formats.
- Unrelated dates such as invoice or appointment dates are not flagged.

## Why redact dates of birth?

Date of birth plus postcode is the classic pair used to re-identify anonymised records.

## Example request

```bash
curl -X POST https://api.bitbanger.in/v1/redact \
  -H "X-API-Key: rdct_your_key_here" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"text": "Patient DOB 1987-04-12, first visit 2026-10-14.", "style": "replace"}'
```

## FAQ

**Does Redactly redact dates of birth automatically?**

Yes. Send text to the API and every detected type is redacted, including dates of birth. To redact only this type, pass the value identity.date_of_birth in the entities filter. No training or configuration is required.

**What happens to dates of birth after redaction?**

With style set to replace, each match becomes [identity.date_of_birth] — the entity type in square brackets. Setting style to mask replaces every character with a block character, and remove deletes the span entirely.

## Related entity types

- [Postal codes](https://bitbanger.in/entities/postal-code) — Redact ZIP and postcode values in US 5-digit, ZIP+4, and UK formats from text and tabular data.
- [Person names](https://bitbanger.in/entities/person-name) — Redact personal names from free text, including partial names the model only half-captures.
- [Social Security numbers](https://bitbanger.in/entities/ssn) — Redact US Social Security numbers in 3-2-4 format from text, JSON, and CSV. Format-matched, with no model dependency.

Try it on your own text: https://bitbanger.in/entities/date-of-birth