Yahoo Finance Signs Your Child's Identity Has Been Stolen
Your child may be living a double life. You may someday be surprised to learn that your precocious 4-year-old daughter owes tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt, or that your 13-year-old son is in hot water with the IRS for accepting a hefty tax refund for a job he never had.
Any parent's child can be a victim of identity theft. "A few years ago, my 10-year-old son's identity was stolen," says Sanjay Deo, a resident of Coral Springs, Florida. "We found this out when we submitted our family's income tax return only to be told that the income tax return for my son had already been processed and [a] refund paid out."
[See: Answers to 7 Burning Tax Questions.]
Deo is also the CEO of 24By7Security Inc., a company that provides cybersecurity consulting and compliance services for clients in regulated industries like financial, health care and education sectors.
See, it can happen to anyone's kid.
Why might a crook be interested in your child? That's where the money is, and it's safer for the thief. If a thief steals a 2-year-old's identity, it might be another 16 years before that kid learns anything is amiss when he, say, tries to take out student loans and learns his credit is shot. The crook's paper trail, meanwhile, has long since vanished.
The few statistics out there don't suggest you should be completely consumed with worry that identity thieves are coming for your child. For instance, a 2011 study from ID Analytics, which develops consumer risk-management software solutions, concluded that 140,000 minors every year have their identity stolen. That's a drop in the bucket if you consider that there are over 73 million children in the U.S., according to ChildStats.gov.
Still, nobody wants their kid to be one of those 140,000.
[See: 10 Warning Signs of Identity Theft.]
The relatively simple way to find out if your child's identity has been compromised. You can request your child's credit report from the three major credit bureaus. You'll need proper documentation, which generally includes furnishing copies of your driver's license, your child's birth certificate and Social Security card, and proof of his or her address.
That's a lot of hoops to jump through, but if all goes well, you will be told that there is no credit report. In fact, according to AnnualCreditReport.com, a website in which you can get an annual free credit report, the nation's biggest credit reporting companies do not intentionally keep information on kids ages 12 and under.
There are red flags you can look out for. Even if you reach out to credit bureaus and learn that there is no credit report on your child, that doesn't mean a thief doesn't have your kid's personal information. It only means that so far, the thief apparently hasn't done anything nefarious with your child's identity.
If you don't want to continually check for credit reports, there are several other signs a con artist may have gotten a grip on your kid's identity, according to Nancy Bistritz, a director of public relations and communications at Equifax, one of the nation's three biggest credit bureaus.
She says some red flags include:
-- If you're receiving calls from collection agencies looking for your kid.
-- If you're receiving pre-approved credit card offers directed at your child.
-- If your teen who is just learning how to drive has been denied the right to a driver's license due to accumulated tickets or you learn that your teenager already has a valid driver's license.
Actions you can take if your kid's identity has been stolen. There are a couple of steps you can take immediately.
"If you suspect identity theft has occurred, you should contact your local law enforcement officials and contact the three credit reporting agencies to report the information," Bistritz says.
And, sure, it may seem crazy to call the police if this is, for all you know, some hacker abroad who has your kid's information, but a crime has been committed. Besides, you never know -- someday, a foreign court trying a credit card thief might want to see that police report you filed.
You might also try putting a credit freeze on your kid's credit with the three credit bureaus. This keeps lenders, utilities and anyone else who might want to see it from being able to until you later remove the freeze. That way, if a thief wants to apply for a credit card in your kid's name, the credit card issuer won't be able to access the report and then the lender (probably) will reject the thief's application. (Credit freezes tend to only work when your kid has a credit history, created by the con artist; if your kid hasn't been a victim of identity theft and doesn't yet have a credit history to freeze, the red tape gets even stickier.)
[See: 12 Simple Ways to Raise Your Credit Score.]
In general, keeping your kid's credit protected isn't any less complex than keeping an adult's credit protected.
"Consumer credit laws and regulations have not kept pace with the identity-theft problem. Less than half the states have laws in place to protect minors' credit," says Sean Bailey, the New York-based co-author of the new book, "Hack-Proof Your Life Now! The New Cybersecurity Rules."
But if your kid's identity is stolen, and you catch it earlier than, say, his or her 17th birthday, you have some time to try and fix everything before your child heads off to college. For now, Deo says that he signed his family up for a comprehensive credit monitoring and protection service. He still isn't sure how his son's identity was stolen, but there are so many ways it can happen, he adds.
"Children's social security numbers are given out usually at very few places, but they can be stolen -- from health insurance databases, life insurance databases, educational institutions, financial institutions like bank accounts or 529 plans. Children's data may also be stolen from social media accounts," Deo says.
So if your kid is living a double life, don't be mad at yourself, either. Maybe you weren't able to keep a watchful eye on his or her social security number, but if your kid is healthy and happy, as a parent, you're doing just fine.
More From US News & World Report
