Children's Identity Theft

[tinapbeana]

Article: Stealing Your Child's Credit

How low can you get?

Nevada ranked second in the nation for identity theft from 2003 to 2005. Just 3 to 4 percent of people who reported the crime in the state were minors, according to the Federal Trade Commission. But for a combination of reasons, the actual number of child victims is likely to be much higher, said Linda Foley, founder of the nonprofit Identity Theft Resource Center.

Children are too young to discover the fraud themselves. Also, their parents can be reluctant to report a fraud within the family. Surveys conducted by the commission last year revealed that almost one-third of those identity theft victims who know the person responsible are swindled by a family member or relative.

Foley estimates that a quarter of calls made to her San Diego advocacy organization are related to child identity theft cases.

[dossin1]

I lost ds ss card. It has been giving me fits since I heard about this child ID theft. I guess I need to request a credit report for him (and he's only 10! )

[Joan.of.the.Arch]

The pessimist in me thinks that most often it is probably the parents themselves who have used the child's identity illicitly. I say this because I know someone who had two children 21 years apart and after ruining her own economic reputation she then started her children out with a "bad name." She failed to pay her own bills and could not get phone, electric, or gas service. So she got services in her 3 year old daughter's name. Years later, she got services in her 2 year old son's name. She does not share a last name with either child, so they appear to be new customers. Then she still left the new bills unpaid. I presume she faked their signatures and whatever else was needed. The daughter moved out when she turned 18 and I presume she found she already had a bad credit record even though she had never truly had any credt. Son is only 6, so still at home. He'll find out some years from now.

[tabbycat31]

I work in collections (shoot me now, yeah I know). We get cases of this every day. Our company will close it out as fraud if the consumer (well the parent of the minor debtor) can provide proof of the SSN and the age.

I think that what is needed is a match system........ no need to be very elaborate here, but simply provide the gender and year of birth attached to every SSN. Ie mine would say "female 1980"........ and if a 50 year old man tried to use my SSN, then a red flag would come up and he'd be denied. That would also prevent use of children's SSNs.

[PRICEPLUS]

The theft of a child's ID is a heinous thing. When parents ruin their kids credit berore they even start out...welll......that is just flat out wrong! Some folks are so messed up they do thison a regular basis. I'll never understand.