BBB Advises Parents To Be On Guard For Signs of ID Theft Targeting Children

The first tell-tale sign that a child has been the victim of identity theft could be a credit card solicitation in the child’s name arriving in the mailbox, the Better Business Bureau of Southern Arizona warns.

Identity thieves comb the Internet to find inactive Social Security numbers, many of them assigned to children. Companies sell the numbers under different names. Thieves then use the numbers to establish fake credit and rack up significant debts. The debts could mar a child’s credit record later in life. Creditors may try to collect the debts, too.

“Identity theft is a serious problem for adults, but it’s even more frightening that it can affect young children,” said Kim States, BBB President. “Parents should take precautions to ensure the safety of their child’s identity and credit.”

Last year, 8.1 million American adults became victims of ID theft, with losses totaling $37 billion, according to a report from Javelin Strategy and Research. While information on child ID theft is scarce, Debix, an ID theft monitoring company, checked records for 40,000 children and found that 4,000 records had been tainted.

BBB advises parents to be on the lookout for signs of child ID theft:

Find out how to check your child’s credit report. Many reports for children under 13 are unavailable from the free credit report website, www.annualcreditreport.com . The easiest way to check is to ask TransUnion, one of the three credit reporting agencies, for your child’s report. If there is no report, then odds are good that your child is in the clear. If not – or if you have other reasons to believe your child has been a victim – you should get reports from the other two bureaus, Experian and Equifax. Recognize signs of trouble. Calls for your children from collection agencies or letters offering them credit cards are common red flags that indicate a child’s identity may have been stolen. Know what to do if you suspect your child is a victim. Every parent should check his or her child’s credit report on the child’s 16th birthday. While it isn’t a good idea to check it too often, families should check reports in time to fix errors and remove fraudulent activity before their children apply for college and seek financial aid. If you find suspicious activity, contact all three credit bureaus and request a report immediately.

How To Recognize Fake Credit Reports | Free Credit Reports Instantly

You’ve seen a million sites that offer free credit reports, and you are probably getting constant spam e-mails as well from people offering you free credit reports. So how do you recognize a scam when you see it? A lot of the time, these sites are not offering anything for free, they just want to get your information from you. There are many hoaxes out there, and most of these sites that are looking to trick you are actually looking to get your personal information from you in any way that they can. Once they get this information from you, they will then sell it to people who are looking to commit fraud or some type of identity theft with this information. This is something that is usually referred to as phishing, which is an Internet scam tactic in which fake website are created that try to get people to give away their personal information, especially credit card information, bank account information or social security numbers.

How can you tell which sites are legit and which are not. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which is the governmental agency that hunts down these types of scams, gives some pretty good tips on their site. The consumer needs to be protected, and that is why you should definitely be very cautious before giving out any of your personal information online. If you get an offer in the email for a free credit report, do not respond to it, and most importantly, do not click on any links that are located in the e-mail. Just delete it. If you are interested and want to see if it is real, if it looks legit, call the number they have provided. If they have not provided a telephone number or if the number listed is a fake or doesn’t work, then this is a scam. If the e-mail is coming from an address that does not end in .com, then you should be skeptical. Especially if it is coming from a foreign address like .de.

If you can find real information on the company through sites like switchboard.com or anywho.com by using the phone or address that they have given you in the email, then it might be a legit offer. Another thing to watch out for is sloppy writing and bad grammar in the e-mails. No real company would allow such an e-mail to go out, because it would tarnish their reputation. If you receive and e-mail with tons of spelling and grammar mistakes, it is a fraud. If the company’s email address is just a misspelled derivative of a real company, then it is a scam. Any time you are asked something that you are not comfortable answering, stop. Chances are that real sites would not ask such question and that it is probably a fraud. For example, if someone is asking you for the pin that you use when you are taking out money at an ATM from your bank card, then it is almost certainly a scam site.

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