How to Protect Your Child from Identity Theft | Pouted.com

If you think that identity theft only happens to adults, think again. Sure, adults, seniors, and others are more probable to take their identity stolen, but here'south a statistic that may shock you: each year, over ane meg children are victims of identity theft. Aye, that'south over i 1000000 children each year. Why would anyone steal a kid'due south identity? Well, about parents are signing up their newborn children with Social Security today. They invest coin for hereafter college expenses and often put it in the child's name for taxation purposes. Merely that becomes problematic because the theft probably won't exist discovered for many years when the child goes out to buy a car, rent an flat or apply for a credit card. That gives the cybercrooks years of a head start.

1 How does this happen?

Child identity theft has its origins in the same way that adult identity theft happens, with a few boosted openings. For example, many schools maintain records of their students, which includes personal data that may include Social Security numbers. Even if they're non required, the school database contains lots of personal information almost the child and the parents, like the place of employment, income, phone numbers, and more. Hackers and cyber crooks know this and have started to target schools for their wealth of personal information. That's why parents should know their child'due south schoolhouse policy when information technology comes to requesting and maintaining private information. Parents have a mandated right to know what information is held and shared by their child's school nether the Family unit Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). The act gives parents the right to know what info the school keeps on their kid.

Hither's why this is important to parents. Within the deed, there's a notice that states that: "Schools may disclose, without consent, "directories" information such as a student'due south name, address, telephone number, appointment and place of birth, honors and awards, Social Security number, and dates of attendance." As you can encounter, school databases can requite upwardly a kid's nativity date, proper noun, phone number, and more than – all a cyber thief needs to steal an identity. But there'southward good news for parents because the FERPA also states that parents tin can asking that the school Not SHARE any of this information about their child with anyone. Schools must honor this request from parents within a reasonable amount of time. According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), parents should also monitor any other personally identifiable information (PII) related to their artless surveys, emails, forms, and other correspondence from their kid's school.

2 Other Avenues for Hackers

School records are only one entry betoken for cyberthieves. Many bad actors scour people search sites to get together all types of personal data about the kid and the family members. This provides avenues for hacking personal and financial data or setting upwardly fraudulent credit accounts and Social Security accounts. Another reason children are then vulnerable to identity theft is that they're not enlightened of many of the online risks. They're emotionally vulnerable, and often to make friends, they give up all types of information that should never be shared online. That includes their birthdate, their phone numbers, where their parents work, when they'll exist out of boondocks, and more, which is all the blazon of information that a cyberthief would need to do all kinds of harm and damage.  Here'southward something else to consider: 60% of all kid identity theft is done by someone that the kid and/or the family knows. And 33% of those thefts are done by family friends. While information technology'south lamentable, information technology's a wake-upward call for parents to teach their kids to be vigilant when they're on the Internet. Take them acquire the alert signs of phishing, how to properly use social media, and other essential safety measures when they're online. That includes creating unique passwords and never using the same one twice.

3 What y'all Need to Exercise

There are some steps you can take to protect your child from identity theft. Monitor their Social Security business relationship for any activeness that looks suspicious. Too, parents should monitor their child'southward credit history to be sure nobody is opening accounts in their name. Check all of the major credit bureaus – Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax. Run a free credit report using annualcreditreport.com. A skillful strategy for parents is to freeze their child'southward credit – afterwards all, they won't be opening whatsoever new credit accounts for years.

Another critical strategy is to remove all unauthorized personal information from people'southward search sites similar WhitePages, PeopleFinders, Intelius, and others. However, you should exist enlightened that there are over 100 people search sites, and each ane has its policies and procedures for removing information and opting out of the site. This could end up being extremely hard and time-consuming to practise manually, and unless you lot want another "total-fourth dimension job," forget trying to do it yourself. Hiring an expert to handle this tin can get quite expensive, simply for the amount of fourth dimension required to consummate it. Instead, apply OneRep, an automated tool that will automatically discover every person searching the site and using its sophisticated algorithms to remove all of your child's personal information from those sites.

Protecting your child against identity theft is critically essential. If a cyber crook ends up stealing your kid'southward identity and opens accounts in his or her name, it volition hurt them years later as they apply for college, utilize for credit, or search for employment. Past being vigilant while they're young and protecting their personal information, yous'll exist helping them both now and in the future.

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