Tuesday, November 8, 2011

5 Tips to offer protection to your child's identification

By Harry James


Criminals look for many who have good credit ratings and clean information as target to get authorized for credit cards and loans. In a recent study, Carnegie Mellon CyLab* discovered that your kids are 50 times more likely to be a victim of ID robbery than you are. In their study, 10% of the children within the record had somebody else use their social security number compared to 0.2% of adults. That is solely something that the majority parents do not think about. Parents are busy with physician visits, planning birthday parties, and saving for college educations. Identify theft is the very last thing on a parent's mind, but if you happen to step back and think about facts, it actually makes sense. Children have blank credit score records so it will be easy to be authorized for a credit card. Secondly, it is vitally unlikely that a parent will screen a child's credit report. If a child's ID is stolen, parents will find out years after the fact. If you don't protect your child's identity now, then it is most probably they'll need credit repair in the future.

Here are 5 Tips to give protection to your child's identity:

1) Watch for mail to your child's name - We get direct mail in our mailboxes each day. Be alert as you sort through your mail. If you notice any pre-approval credit card offers to your child's name it should raise a red flag. Credit cards provide a sign that your kid may have a credit file open. If you begin to get telephone calls from collection businesses asking for your child, which may be additionally a red flag indicating imaginable id theft.

2) Protect your child's personal information - Keep sensitive information such as your child's social security number and date of birth in a locked safe. You never know who will be over at your home and also you don't want sensitive information out in the open. Another approach to give protection to non-public information is to put a password on your smart phone, which may have all the private information for the whole family. If it falls within the wrong hands, you need to have a password to protect that information. Make your password distinctive and keep away from selecting your pet's name or your mother's maiden name.

3) Don't publish your child's private information - Don't publish your e-mail address, mother's maiden name, pet's name or child's birthday on social networking websites comparable to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. When you submit data on social networking sites, you should imagine it public and remember the fact that the entire world can see it. Always think carefully before you publish on the web.

4) Be aware of phishing scams focused on your kid - Phishing is the term when a con artist makes an attempt to assemble personal data from you through pretending to be an organization with "lost data." Never give out your child's social security number over the phone or over the Internet. To ensure whether or not the call is legitimate, hang up and make contact with the regular customer service line to confirm.

5) Educate your child - As you can teach your child to watch out around strangers, you need to coach them to give protection to their identity. Teach them to never share non-public data corresponding to their social security number, date of birth, or home address to anyone and by no means enter personal data on the Internet. The chance of criminals stealing your child's identification will drop significantly if you do your part to protect it.




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