Even though we do not normally think of children as becoming victims of identity theft, it is best to be on the cautious side when it comes to their protection. Many children have become victims of identity theft without knowing until they begin their adult life in the financial world.

The Identity Theft Resource Center has an online guide that parents can utilize when it comes to protecting the identity of their children. Unfortunately in many cases, it is a family member that has stolen the identity, although it should not be ruled out that strangers do so as well.

The first thing that should be done is to check the child’s credit report. Hopefully, it will show no activity.

Second, realize that many company’s who issue credit, do not have a way to verify that the applicant’s age is correct. If the credit is issued over the phone or internet, than the issuer does not have proof of identity to verify the age by. The applicant’s age is usually not disclosed to the credit bureaus and so they will not catch the fact that this credit is being issued to a minor.

Recently, someone in Phoenix, AZ broke into a storage unit and stole hard drives that contained sensitive, personal information of 40,000 children. The drives were the property of the Arizona Department of Economic Security. The Department’s spokesperson, Liz Barker Alvarez, has reported that the information contained on these drives is password protected. Since other storage units were also broken into during this period, it is not believed by police that this information was specifically targeted.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 10th, 2008 at 8:41 am and is filed under Data Breach. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.