Parents will usually do just about anything to protect their children. They try to provide them with the best nourishment, take care of them when they are sick, and give them lots of unconditional love. Parents also try to do everything in their power to prevent complications so children can have the best chance to grow up healthy and happy.
However, parents now must face a growing problem that could harm the financial futures of their children: Child Identity Theft.
A recent article by one of America’s leading identity theft experts, John Sileo, warns parents to be on the lookout for child identity theft. Keeping an eye on your child's credit now can save them from a tremendous amount of financial heartache in the future from identity theft and fraud.
Child identity theft can cause a lifetime of headaches. Even though their children may not be in high school yet – or even have all of their teeth – parents should remain vigilant against child identity theft and check their child's credit score for fraudulent activity.
Parents who think they have many years before they need to worry about protecting their children from identity theft are sadly mistaken. Children are highly attractive identity theft targets because they have untouched and unblemished credit records. Identity thieves steal a child’s identity early, nurture it until they have a solid credit score, and then abuse and discard it.
According to Sileo, child identity theft is the fastest growing type of the identity theft. Although it’s difficult to estimate exactly how many children lose their identities – since the crime can go undetected for years – the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) estimates that 5 percent of identity theft cases target children, which translates into approximately 500,000 "kidnapped" child identities each year. Even more troubling, the Identity Theft Resource Center discovered that in over half (54 percent) of the cases, the child was under the age of six.
So how does child identity theft happen?
All an identity thief needs to ruin a bright financial future for children is their name and Social Security Number (SSN), and these pieces of personal information are exposed in a variety of ways:
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When registering for daycare, schools, and recreational sports.
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When filling out medical, dental, and hospital records.
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When joining organizations like the Girl Scouts or Boy Scouts.
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When the child's information is permanently stored and accessed by volunteers or employees.
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When one of the organizations storing the child's information is breached by a hacker or malicious software.
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When an adult becomes a "friend" to a child on a social networking site like MySpace or Facebook and tricks the child into disclosing personal information.
While the child’s age should show up on any credit background check, the majority of people screening the credit report rarely give it the time and care necessary to detect fraud and simply match the name and the SSN provided. Identity thieves are then free to wreak havoc on a child’s perfect credit, leaving a maxed out credit card, unpaid bills, and possibly even a criminal record.
Even worse, the age of the “applicant” – i.e. the identity thief posing as a child – becomes official with the credit bureaus upon the first credit application. This makes clearing a sabotaged credit record even more difficult because parents have to prove to the credit bureau that their child is not old enough to have a credit card and isn’t responsible for the accumulated debt.
Unfortunately, both parent and child might not discover the identity theft until the child is older and tries to open a bank account, apply for a job, get a driver’s license, or enter college. At that point, the grown child could spend years cleaning up someone else’s fraudulent mess.
Parents acting now on behalf of their children will protect them from the consequences of child identity theft:
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Starting adulthood with a low credit rating.
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Being denied a first loan, credit card, or apartment rental because of a crime committed many years earlier (the passage of time makes this crime very hard to clear up).
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Being denied access to college or a new job.
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Having a warrant out for an arrest for crimes that they didn’t commit.
For parents, cleaning up the disaster of child identity theft for their children is costly and time consuming. Just as parents can’t protect their children from every bruise and scrape, nothing can entirely remove the risk of identity theft. However, taking steps right now to protect children from child identity theft is a one of the best investments parents will make in their children's financial future.
Parents can take control of their children’s sensitive information – and their own as well – by giving themselves and their children a personal background check. While most background check companies focus exclusively on employers and large corporations, MyBackgroundCheck.com is a leading provider of consumer background checks and has performed over one million background checks on individuals worldwide. For more information, please visit www.mybackgroundcheck.com, email info@mybackgroundcheck.com, or call 1-800-503-2364.
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While the vast majority of schools currently run background checks on teachers, they aren’t the only people who work closely – in some cases, too closely – with students. The following two cases from the Southern California area will show why schools should have the same standards for criminal background checks on volunteers and contractors as they do for teachers.
In the first case, San Diego-area school officials were forced to review their policies for background checks on volunteers after they learned an un-registered 63-year-old sex offender had worked with students for several months as a volunteer music coach. The man was arrested recently on suspicion of failing to register as a sex offender and was taken into custody. Sex-crimes detectives were then notified about possible inappropriate conduct between the man and a student at the school where he worked once a week after regular classes ended.
A background check was never done on the volunteer, admitted a spokesman for the School District, since the district's policy leaves it up to school principals to order background checks on volunteers “when appropriate.” However, there are no clear guidelines to determine when a background check is appropriate. State education law requires schools to do background checks only on employees, not volunteers, unless the school makes a specific request.
This was not the first time the man had been accused of failing to register as a sex offender, as that was among the charges facing him in 1999 in connection with the molestation of two teenage boys. He pleaded guilty in June of that year to two counts of child molestation.
The second case concerned an outside contractor for a school in the San Gabriel area who put on an astronomy program at an elementary school. Although he had a criminal record that included a felony and a lewd conduct conviction, the contractor passed a background check conducted by a company that books sub-contractors to put on educational presentations at schools around the country. Background checks were done on all contractors by a background screening service and the contractor's name came back clear. However, this particular background screening service had been reported by consumers for delivering incomplete background checks.
The contractor was arrested a day after the assembly and was later tried on charges of inappropriately touching five girls during the presentation (he was later acquitted on three of the four charges, with the fourth ending in a deadlocked jury). At his trial, prosecutors said the accused man's criminal history included a 1996 arrest for lewd conduct while parked in front of a playground, a felony count of possession of a controlled substance with intent to sell that same year, and a two year prison sentence, according to court records.
Protecting children and teenagers from the unthinkable should be the top priority for schools, and their background check policies must extend beyond teachers to include volunteers and contractors. MyBackgroundCheck.com – a member of the Pre-employ.com Family of Companies – has performed background check services on volunteers and contractors for the American Red Cross as well as many other non-profit and volunteer organizations. To learn more about MyBackgroundCheck.com’s background check services for volunteers and contractors, please visit www.MyBackgroundCheck.com, email info@mybackgroundcheck.com, or call 1-800-503-2364.
Contact Us @ MyBackgroundCheck.com
*We welcome relevant comments and questions from consumers, experts, and human resources professionals. Please do not submit comments with advertisements as they will not be posted publicly. Thanks for visiting our blog!