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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