The easiest and most ideal target for identity thieves are children. Children have fresh and unblemished credit records that most likely will not be checked for quite some time. Up to 500,000 cases of identity theft per year, involve children. This makes up about 5% of all cases of identity theft that are reported to the FTC. Where do identity thieves find this information? Pediatricians’ offices, schools, even internet profiles that are composed of identifying information. Even though the children are young, most companies do not check the age of the owner of the social security number given and therefore, the owner’s age is not revealed until fraud is reported. Even though it seems this type of identity theft should be easily rectified, the opposite holds true. Child identity theft is very hard to deal with and many institutions are not prepared to handle such claims. Unfortunately, the children suffer in early adulthood when they go to apply for college loans or to start building their own credit, only to find out that they already have a bad credit rating. Some might even receive collection notices or worse.

So is there any way to protect your children? Yes, you can enroll children in an identity theft protection service, like LifeLock, to help prevent any personal information from being used. Adding a child membership to your adult account is easy and very inexpensive. By using promo code “DEFENSE” you can add a child for a very low price. It costs less than taking them to McDonald’s once a month and it helps to protect them from a vicious crime that can last for years to come. Children should not have a credit file yet, however, if LifeLock finds that they do have one they will alert you of the file as that is a strong indication of identity theft.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 27th, 2009 at 6:40 am and is filed under Articles Concerning Identity Theft. 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.