Parenting Tips: How To Prevent Your Child From Child Identity Theft
Child identity theft is one of the major things that parents should be concerned with in the lives of their child. This act involves identity criminals stealing your child's social security number to give them a new identity that would allow them to open a bank account or apply for a credit card account.
Child Identity Theft 101
Parents.com said that aside from identity thieves stealing your child's social security number for financial reasons, there are other criminal acts that they could do with it. Fraudulent activities involving altering medical records, engaging in money laundering and other serious crimes that your child's name could be linked to could also happen. This is serious that it could reflect on your child's permanent record. The only time that your child could find out about it is when he applies for a driver's license at 18 or starts opening his bank account.
How To Stop Child Identity Theft
The only way to stop this crime is to prevent it from happening. The first thing that parents should do is check for a credit report for both themselves and their kids. Once they find out that their child has a credit history, there is a huge chance that their social security number has been compromised. Parents could report this to firms like Equifax and other credit card companies to make sure that no charges would be made or continue under their child's name. Reporting it to the police is also important.
Prevention is better than going through the many processes of damage control on your child's identity. According to LifeLock, it is possible that a company could help you monitor your child and even your own account to protect you from identity thieves.
One in 40 households has a child being victimized by identity thieves, so don't be one of those. Share this information today to your loved ones because this is really urgent.
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