Is your 3 year old Grandchild in default on a car loan?
That sounds like a silly question but child ID theft is becoming more of an issue as more of our lives go online.
Did you know that having information as simple as a date of birth and town of birth is enough to give professional ID thieves a good guess as to your Social Security number? With more children conversing and posting online, that information may be too easy to get if we're not careful.
With a children's Social Security number, fraudulent accounts (in their name of someone else's) can be set up and used for years before they are detected. Who thinks to check a child's credit report before they start applying for college financial aid?
And yet you shouldn't check children's credit reports because just checking on them creates a report history which then makes it easier for ID thieves!
So how do you protect the children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews in your life?
Unless you are getting credit or collection calls or letters in the child's name, the Identity Theft Resource Center (http://www.idtheftcenter.org/index.html) suggests waiting until a child is 16 before checking on their credit report. At that age, if there is a problem, you have 2 years to correct it before the child turns 18.
And in the mean time, monitoring what information your child puts out on the web is always a good idea.
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