Keep Your Child Safe from Identity Theft

Today, I'm going to share with you a story from my life and a lesson that I learned that I hope will help you keep your children safe from fraud. All of that and more coming up on The Secure Family Podcast.

It's tax season! Aren't you excited? Okay, so you and I may not like tax season, but scammers do. Did you know that scammers can use your real data to file your taxes and steal your refund? People can use the data from breaches and data broker sites to pretend to be you and actually file your taxes, and the government won't know the difference. That's why I personally use DeleteMe. DeleteMe is a subscription service that removes your personal data from hundreds of data broker sites.

Don't let someone steal your hard earned tax refund. One important step you can take is to remove your data from these sites. Plus, you can file your return early before a scammer can do anything. Today, get 20 percent off your DeleteMe plan when you go to JoinDeleteMe.com/Dad and use the promo code DAD at checkout. The only way to get 20 percent off is to go to JoinDeleteMe.com/Dad and enter the code DAD at checkout. That's JoinDeleteMe.com/Dad, code DAD.

Parents, it's time to level up your online gaming safety. My new ebook, Level Up: The Parent 30 Minute Guide to Online Gaming Safety, is now available at TheSecureDad.com. In just 30 minutes, you'll learn how to protect your kids from online dangers, set up smart guidelines, and give them the freedom to play without all of the worry.

In this new ebook, I'll give you a parent friendly breakdown of the online gaming world, you'll get a clearer understanding of why kids love gaming and how it fits into their social lives, You'll learn about the biggest threats, like cyberbullying, inappropriate content, and online grooming, and of course, I will show you how to deal with them.

I'll provide you with proven methods to build trust and have meaningful conversations with your child about gaming safety, because I've done this all myself. Plus, I'll share the red flags of grooming so that you can protect your kids online and in real life. And I will do all of this in the time it takes you to watch one of your favorite TV shows. No fear mongering. Just real solutions from a dad, a gamer, and of course, a family safety advocate. Don't wait.

Grab your copy today at TheSecureDad.Com. There's a link for you in today's podcast show notes.

You know, as parents, we are understandably concerned about the safety and wellbeing of our children. We make sure that when our kids are young, there aren't any choking hazards in their way. Then when they're older, we teach them how to drive safely and we want them to make good decisions while they're gaming online, becoming digital citizens. Those are all safety concerns that are in our daily lives.

We can see those things and affect them for our kids, an unseen danger that parents often overlook, including me, is child identity theft. If you've never thought about this before, I certainly don't blame you. So in 2023, I learned that it was a good idea to think about my son's financial future, not just from the point of view of having a good savings account or anything like that, but to protect his good name. So in 2023, I froze my son's credit with the three major credit bureaus.

I did what I thought at the time was an extra step to further protect him. Like my goodness, after all I founded The Secured Dad, you know, this should be something that I do. I had to gather, like, a whole bunch of information and paperwork and mail it in to each of the credit bureau. And, by the way, they don't all use the same forms, they don't want all the same identification. It's a process, but I did it. And it worked.

What I didn't know was that I would actually be very thankful for doing this less than a year later. In April of 2024, I got a letter from our bank saying that my son's personal information had been compromised, in what they called a small data breach. He has a youth savings account, and the bank had his information, like his name and address and social security number. And those things were exposed in this breach.

At the time, he was 11. At 11, my son was involved in what I believe to be his first data breach. And that's the world that we live in today. This is something that we have to take seriously. I consider child identity theft to be an unseen danger, and I say this because mostly the attack comes from somebody online who takes that data, who isn't anywhere near your child and most likely never knows you. They don't know what you look like. They don't really know where you live.

You're just a bunch of ones and zeros in a file. So as a parent, how are we supposed to know that this is a thing? So let me make this clear. If your child has a social security number, they are at risk of identity theft. That means this potential threat starts with all of the paperwork that you fill out at the hospital that's associated with your child's birth certificate.

Most parents don't ever think about this and it could ruin your child's financial future and you may not even know about it for 17 or 18 years. I don't want you to find out that there's a problem with your child's credit score when they go to apply for a car loan or apply for financial aid at college. But that's when a lot of people get hit with some really bad news. You see, our children are a blank slate in a number of ways.

Because there isn't a lot of legal information about a young child in any record, that means that the bad guys have a lot of leeway in creating their own fake identity with your child's real information. With your child's ID, a thief can open new lines of credit in your child's name, they could buy things with a credit card, collect unemployment, and even open fake bank accounts. In some cases, thieves have been able to get medical procedures. I don't know how that works, but it happens.

Also, personally identifiable information can be sold on the dark web. So if the thief takes it, that thief may never use it. It may take a few months or a year to sell that off. Then it could be sold more than once and cause trouble at different times in your child's life. Once that information is compromised, It's out there and that's, that's hard. That's tough. Now at this point you might wonder if the credit reporting companies catch this type of fraud.

Unfortunately, that is not as cut and dry as you think. And that is an ongoing theme in all of this. The way it works is that the social security number is validated separately from the other personally identifiable information in the process. I'm sure there's a good reason for it, but looking at it through this lens, I don't feel that that's a good thing. I'm just a dad. A scammer could use the identity of a 40 year old man with the social security number of a 12 year old girl.

This may seem counterintuitive to you and me, but it is the current process that we all have to live with. And I don't think it's going to change anytime soon, even after the big National Public Data Breach. I don't think we're going to see any changes.

So let's switch gears now and talk about what we can do to protect our children's identities. If any of these things that I'm about to tell you sound intimidating, don't worry. I have created a free guide that will go over all of this. I will share each step that I took in freezing my son's credit so that you can do the same. And there's a link for you in the show notes to download this guide. One of the biggest leaks of a child's personal information. Is us. It's the parents.

Yeah, we're supposed to be the protectors, but sometimes we make mistakes. We may inadvertently give away very valuable information about our children in person or even online. Have you ever seen those cute birth announcement pictures on social media? There's gonna be like a small child that looks like a squishy potato next to a letter board that says Ava Charlotte Riddle, born August 1st, 2023, Sugar Land, Texas.

In that one picture an unsuspecting proud parent has given away a lot of personal data. Their child's legal name, gender, date of birth, and place of birth have been shown to everybody on the internet. That's a lot of information for a seasoned scammer to use. That's really a goldmine. And to make it worse, thieves can search for the parents names and addresses and phone numbers, and even their relatives. This gives them a robust amount of legitimate information.

And what is so bad is that at this point, nothing illegal has taken place yet. An identity thief can simply see a social media post. Then they can do a legal search on a site like whitepages. com to find out the rest of the information. It's only when they commit fraud that a crime has occurred. As parents, we must consider what we post online and how it may affect our child's future. And yes, joining DeleteMe is a great way to protect your family's data from searches like this.

Another way your child's identity can be stolen, is in a data breach. Some breaches only divulge email addresses or passwords or things like that, but there was an epic data breach in South Carolina that compromised 6.4 million residents. Including children. Back in 2012, 3. 6 million social security numbers were exposed along with other information in a breach that originated from a phishing attack at a state government office.

At the time, and I say this, at the time, it was the largest cyber attack against a state agency in the nation. In response, the state offered residents credit monitoring for two years. Kind of as damage control. The issue is that Social Security numbers don't change. If criminals are patient enough to have waited until 2015, they could have had a ton of information ready to go past that free credit monitoring period.

You might be thinking that this all seems impossible to protect your child's valuable data, but there are steps that parents can take to shield their children's information. The first thing that we have to do is protect our children's personal information and take that very seriously. You've listened to this show, you are now on notice. This is very important. Don't share detailed birth announcements with valuable information.

Also, keeping your child's social security number secret is vital, while government forms may require it, if you don't have to share it, then don't. It's okay for you to ask a daycare, an online service, or whatever, why the social security number is necessary. Then ask if it's okay that you don't provide it on the basis of protecting your child. Just see what happens. There's probably a lot of times they'll just waive that for you.

One of the best ways to protect your child from identity theft is to freeze their credit. You may think that since they're young that your child does not have a credit score, so you don't really need to worry about it. Freezing your child's credit essentially locks it until your child is ready to use it. This will keep identity thieves from hurting your child's credit history. So, going back to 2023, my wife and I chose to freeze our son's credit. And the process was complicated.

I had to pull together a lot of documents. I had to physically mail it in to the three big credit companies, which, by the way, uh, are Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. Unfortunately, freezing a minor's credit is not as easy as it is for an adult. Think back to the National Public Data breach not that long ago. I was encouraging adults to call numbers and freeze their credit, which could be done over the phone. That is just not the case with children.

You have to prove that you are the guardian to each of the bureaus, and that will take some legwork on your part to prove that. Generally, you'll have to identify who you are, that you are the guardian of the child. You'll have to provide your government ID, their birth certificate, and a few other documents. Then there are a few forms that have to be filled out and then physically mailed in. And of course, the processes are similar, but they are not the same for all three companies.

Plus you'll have to do this process for each one of your children. It can get overwhelming, but it is worth it. I'm not going to go into all the details right now because it is an exhaustive process, but I've created for you a free step by step guide on how to freeze your child's credit. This is based on what I did to successfully freeze my son's credit. There are links to the information that you'll need and some tips that I learned along the way, and I'm happy to share those with you for free.

And there's a link in the show notes for you. When your child is ready for their credit to be unfrozen, you'll need to contact all three companies again to initiate the process. So when you complete the freeze, the company will mail you a packet of information on how to open the account again. Keep this information in a safe place, like a safe deposit box or a fireproof safe, because you are going to need it in the future. It does seem like a lot of work, but consider this.

Would you rather do some work now? Or do a ton of work later when your child's credit is ruined. It may take years to clear up the residual effects of identity thieves. If you discover that your child's information has already been stolen, you can report it, and then have those fraudulent accounts closed, and then you can freeze your child's credit. The FTC has a process that they use to help you.

But as you can see, one way or another, freezing your child's credit is going to be a solution, either for prevention or as an emergency measure when things have gone really, really wrong. Parents need to do their part in keeping their child's social security number and their personal data safe and private. Be proactive and consider freezing your child's credit now so that they can have a strong financial future.

Well, this concludes this episode of The Secure Family Podcast. Thank you so much, friend, for being a part of the show. Take back your privacy and personal data with help from DeleteMe. Get 20 percent off a privacy plan when using the code DAD at checkout. DeleteMe is the official data removal service of The Secure Dad. Keep your kids safe while gaming online with my new ebook, Level Up. It's available to you right now at the link in the show notes.

If you'd like to know more about The Secure Dad, visit thesecuredad.com. There you'll find free downloads, books to buy, podcast episodes, and a whole lot more. I'm Andy Murphy, and I want you to consider freezing your child's credit. Yes, it is tedious, but it is worth the effort. Trust me.